


The Mummy

by Ashton210



Series: RWBY STYLE [10]
Category: RWBY, The Mummy (1999)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:55:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24267007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashton210/pseuds/Ashton210
Summary: The Mummy but with Rwby characters.
Series: RWBY STYLE [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1751530





	The Mummy

.........1.........

The hot desert sun shone over a pair of mighty white pyramids with golden tips. Nearby, a monolithic sphinx was under construction, nearly complete, as well as a bustling city. Off to the side, in the shade, a man rode a chariot past several men armed with shields and spears, each one bowing before him as he approached.

"Thebes, City of the Living." Blake narrated. "Crown jewel of Pharaoh Seti I. Home of Ozpin, Pharaoh's high priest, keeper of the dead." Ozpin was dressed in black robes that displayed his chest and abs, well-toned for his age. "Birthplace of Salem, Pharaoh's mistress." Salem herself walked into a room with walls made of solid gold. Though, this wasn't the Salem the crew saw back at Haven courtesy of Emerald.

"No other man was allowed to touch her."

Salem walked past statues on either side of her and signaled for a group of men to bar the door. As they moved to obey, she walked through a golden veil. Ozpin awaited her on the other side. They regarded each other before embracing in a passionate kiss.

"But for their love, they were willing to risk life itself."

In their passion, Ozpin accidentally smudged the black paint on one of Salem's arms. As the men were about to close the doors, Seti pushed them back open on his own. He looked at the men, confused.

"What are you doing here?" he asked in ancient Vacuoan. He walked past them and found Salem leaning against a sculpture of a cat seductively. Seti wasn't buying it though. He saw the smeared paint on her arm. "Who has touched you?" he asked angrily. When he noticed Salem looking at something behind him, he turned, only for Ozpin to draw his sword. "Ozpin?" he said, shocked.

Salem stabbed a dagger into his back. As he cried out in pain, Ozpin sank the sword into his stomach. Seti screamed as Ozpin and Salem continued to hack at him. Suddenly, a banging came from the double doors.

"Pharaoh's bodyguards." Ozpin said, ready to fight. Salem urged him to save himself, but he would not leave her.

"Only you can resurrect me." She said, drawing his attention long enough for her attendants to drag him away as the guards busted the door in. They were male and human for the most part, with the odd Faunus visible among them. They saw Seti dead upon the floor and his likely killer standing before them.

"My body is no longer his temple." Salem declared before plunging the dagger into her heart.

A train of chariots were traveling through the desert at night, led by Ozpin.

"To resurrect Salem," Blake narrated, "Ozpin and his priests broke into her crypt and stole her body. They raced deep into the desert, taking Salem's corpse to Hamunaptra, City of the Dead, ancient burial site for the sons of pharaohs and resting place for the wealth of Vacuo."

"For his love, Ozpin dared the gods' anger by going deep into the city where he took the black Book of the Dead from its' holy resting place." Ozpin led a procession of his priests down a long staircase, a gigantic ebon tome in his hands. He and his priests began a ritual, chanting in a circle around Salem's corpse. "Salem's soul had been sent to the dark underworld, her vital organs removed and placed in five sacred canopic jars." As the chanting continued, a pool of water began to ripple until some... thing rose from its' depths and slowly flew over to Salem's corpse. It assimilated with her, and she gasped as she tried to breathe. "Salem's soul had come back from the dead, but Pharaoh's bodyguards had followed Ozpin and stopped him before the ritual could be completed."

"Ozpin's priests were condemned to mummified alive. As for Ozpin, he was condemned to face the Hom-Dai, the worst of all ancient curses. One so horrible, it had never before been bestowed."

The casket was locked and placed inside another, larger casket which was locked again.

"He was to remain sealed inside his sarcophagus, be undead for all of eternity. The Medjai would never allow him to be released, for he would arise a walking disease, a plague upon mankind, an unholy flesh-eater with the strength of ages and power of the sands, and the glory of invincibility."

The camera panned up a statue of a man with the head of a dog made of onyx.

THE MUMMY

Sand passed in front of the statue, and the stone slowly turned from a smooth, midnight black to a rough, dull stone grey. Men in military uniforms ran past it.

HAMUNAPTRA, 1923

"For 3000 years, men and armies fought over this land, never knowing what evil lay beneath it."

The military men took covered firing positions in a line outside the ruins of Hamunaptra, as a horde of desert-dwellers on horseback charged them, screaming and yelling.

"And for 3000 years, we, the Medjai, the descendants of Pharaoh's sacred bodyguards, kept watch." Blake, along with several other Faunus, watched from atop a cliff overlooking the battle.

A man on horseback, likely the commander, slapped his horses' flank with the flat of his sword and took off back into the ruins. The only ones to see this were a man with unkempt blonde hair, and another with silver hair.

Mercury looked to Jaune. "You just got promoted." He said.

"At the ready!" Jaune yelled as he and Mercury took aim.

The horsemen continued their charge.

"Steady!" he yelled out. "You're with me on this, right?" he asked Mercury

"Oh, your strength gives me strength." Mercury said as he moved a step back.

As the horsemen got closer, Mercury thought better of this particular life choice. He threw down his gun and ran back to the ruins. "Fuck this! Hey, wait up!" he yelled.

"Fire!" Jaune ordered when the horsemen got close enough. Unfortunately, his men were only able to fire a few times before he ordered a retreat, doing little damage overall. The horsemen overwhelmed their position, but Jaune kept firing. When his rifle was no longer an option, he dropped it and drew a pair of revolvers. When those were empty, he dropped them too and drew a pair of pistols hidden in the small of his back.

Eventually, he too ran back into the ruins. He saw Mercury ahead of him, near the entrance to a tomb.

"Run, Merc, run!" he yelled. Mercury ran into the tomb and began to close the door. "Hey! Don't you close that door! Don't you close that door!" He failed to make it before Mercury sealed it shut.

He ran through the ruins; the horsemen close on his heels. Ultimately, they cornered him in front of the statue of the dog-man. He closed his eyes tight and waited for death, but it never came. For some reason, the horses panicked and immediately ran off despite the protests of their masters. Jaune opened his eyes, unable to completely process his good fortune.

Suddenly, the sand beneath began to move violently. He managed to get away and ran as the sands formed into the shape of a roaring man's face.

Blake and her troupe watched from the cliffs as the horsemen quit the field, leaving the entire army of soldiers dead but for two.

"The Creature remains undiscovered." She said. One of her men noticed Jaune running off into the desert.

"And what of this one?" he asked. Jaune stopped and looked back, seeing them staring at him. "Should we kill him?"

"No. The desert will kill him." And with that, she led her men away from the carnage.

The scene changed to a thriving city, the pyramids from the beginning visible in the distance.

KINGDOM OF VACUO, 3 YEARS LATER

Several horse-drawn carriages passed by the Vacuo Museum of Antiquities. Inside the library, a familiar young lady was talking to herself as she worked.

"Sacred stones, sculpture and aesthetics, Socrates, Seth, volume one, volume two, and volume three..." Velvet was wearing a long skirt, a white blouse, glasses, and her long brown hair was done up in a bun. "And... Tuthmosis?" she chuckled, "What are you doing here?" she looked around herself until she found the 'Tu' section right across from her current stack.

Instead of climbing down the ladder and re-positioning it like any sane person would, Velvet simply held the book out and leaned as far as she could, still at the top of the ladder. The result was predictable. She stretched too far and took the ladder with her, standing it up perfectly straight. She scanned the room, desperately looking for help. There was none.

Eventually, she lost her balance and fell on the stack she had been working on, causing it to fall over. It was dominos after that. The stack fell over, causing the next to fall over, and so on and on, until every stack in the library fell over in a giant oval, with Velvet at the center.

"Oops..." she said meekly.

"What the..." Ilia said when she came into the library, "How even..." she saw Velvet standing in the center of it all and everything fell into place. "Look at this!" she said as she marched over to Velvet. "Give me frogs! Flies! Locusts! Anything but you! Compared to you, the other plagues were a joy!"

"I'm sorry, ma'am. It was an accident."

"My girl," Ilia said softly, "When Ramses destroyed Syria, that was an accident. You, are a CATASTROPHE! Look at this place! Why do I put up with you?"

Velvet saw an opportunity to redeem herself. "Well, you put up with me because I- I can read and write ancient Vacuoan, and, um, I can... I can decipher hieroglyphics and hieratic, and," she grew a little bit confidant and angry at the same time, "and because I am the only person within a thousand miles who can properly code and categorize this library. That's why you put up with me!" she pouted a little bit.

"No, I put up with you because your mother and father were our finest patrons! Gods rest their souls." Ilia sighed and looked Velvet square in the eye. "Now, I don't care how you do it, I don't care how long it takes, just clear up this mess!"

Velvet was about to set to work, when she heard a clattering coming from behind her in the display hall. It was a large, high-ceilinged room filled with artifacts- statues and paintings mostly.

"Hello?" she asked. When nobody answered, she grabbed a torch and began to walk deeper in. "Sun? Coco? Bob?" She started when she heard a thud from behind her. It was coming from the bottom half of a sarcophagus. She approached slowly, trying to keep her footsteps as quiet as possible.

Suddenly, the coffin's occupant sat up and she screamed in fright. The screaming was followed by male laughter as Neptune sat up in the coffin.

"Have you no respect for the dead?" she asked him angrily.

"Of course, I do. But sometimes," he put the skeleton's arm on the rim of the sarcophagus. "I'd really like to join them."

"Well, I wish you would do it sooner rather than later before you ruin my career like you did yours." She put the skeleton back in its resting place. "Now, get out!" She gave him a light slap on the cheek.

"My dearest unofficial baby sister, I'll have you know," he stumbled as he clambered out of the coffin. "That at this precise moment, my career is on a high note."

"Come on, Nep, please, I'm really not in the mood for you right now. I've just made a bit of a huge mess in the library," she amended when Neptune gave her a funny look, "and the Bembridge scholars have rejected my application again." She sat down at the feet of a nearby statue. "They claim I don't have enough experience in the field."

"Hey," Neptune said, taking her hands and giving her a soft smile, "We still have each other. Always will." She smiled at that.

She and Neptune went way back. They met as kids at a Vacuoan middle school. Neptune stood up to a pack of bullies on her behalf and kind of made it known to the rest of the school that she was under his protection. Somewhere along the line, they became like brother and sister.

"Besides," he said, digging through his pockets, "I have just the thing to cheer you up."

"Ah, come on, Nep, not another worthless trinket. If I have to take another useless piece of junk up to Ilia and try to- "she stopped when he showed her a small, grey, octagonal puzzle box. She took from his hand as he sat down next to her. "Where did you get this?" she asked, captivated. This was most definitively not junk.

"On a dig, down in Thebes." Neptune said. Velvet heard the lie in his voice. He couldn't hide anything from her ears. She ignored it though as she continued to examine the box. "My whole life, I've never found anything, Velvs. Please, tell me I've found something."

Velvet twisted the base of the box and it popped open, revealing a small, folded piece of papyrus.

"Neptune, I think you've finally found something."

..........2.........

Velvet took the map to Ilia immediately after performing a few tests on it. She opened it up to see the simplistic, yet stylistic designs ancient Vacuo was famed for.

"You see the cartouche there?" Velvet asked her, excitedly, "It's the official royal seal of Seti I, I'm sure of it."

"Perhaps..." Ilia said as she examined the map.

"Two questions." Neptune interjected. "Who was Seti I and was he rich?"

"The second pharaoh of the 19th dynasty, said to be the wealthiest pharaoh of them all." Velvet explained, indulging her simplistic friend.

"Good. That's good. I like this fellow. I like him very much."

"I've already dated the map. It's almost 3000 years old. And if you look at the hieratic right here," she pointed to a corner of the map. "Well... it's Hamunaptra." That caught everyone's attention.

"Dear Gods, don't be ridiculous." Ilia scoffed. "We're scholars here, not treasure hunters. Hamunaptra's a myth told by ancient storytellers to amuse superstitious tourists, old and new."

"Yes, yes, I know all the rumors and tall tales about the city being protected by a mummy monster and all that, but my research has led me to believe that the city itself may have actually existed."

"Wait a sec," Neptune said, looking up from the map, "Are we talking about the Hamunaptra here?"

"Yes, 'the City of the Dead', where the earliest pharaohs were said to have hidden the wealth of Vacuo."

"Yeah, yeah, in a big underground chamber." Neptune said, recalling what he could of the legend. Ilia scoffed at him and shook her head. "Oh, come on. Everyone knows the story. The entire necropolis was rigged to sink at Pharaoh's command. Just a flick of a switch, and the whole city would disappear under the sands, taking the treasure with it."

"As the Valeans would say, it's all fairy tales and hokum." Ilia said as she held the map before her lamp as she examined it. Unfortunately, she held it too close and it caught fire. She cried out as she threw it to the floor in alarm. Neptune and Velvet scrambled to put it out, but by the time they did, the most important part had been lost.

"God dammit! You burnt off the part with the lost city!" Neptune said in dismay.

"It's for the best, I'm sure." Ilia said, sitting at her desk. "Many men have wasted their lives in the pursuit of Hamunaptra. No one's ever found it. Most, have never returned."

"Come, come, step over the threshold." Arthur Watts told them. This wasn't the Watts they knew though. he was grossly over-weight, and his mustache was swapped for a unibrow and a pencil-thin goatee. "Welcome to Vacuo Prison, my humble home!"

Everywhere men in uniform watched over prisoners as they worked in the yard. Velvet punched Neptune in the arm.

"You told me you got it on a dig down in Thebes." She said, her ears displaying her indignance.

"Yes, well I was mistaken, wasn't I?" Neptune said, rubbing his arm where she had hit him.

"You lied to me!"

"I lie to everyone. What makes you so special?"

"I'm your sister, you ass."

"Well, then that just makes you more gullible, doesn't it?" That earned him yet another punch.

"Neptune, you stole it from a drunk in the local bar!

"Picked his pocket, actually, so I don't think it's a very good idea to- "he tried to walk away, but Velvet pulled him back in line beside her.

"Man up and face it, Nep." She turned to Watts and asked, "What is this man in prison for?"

"Well, this I did not know." He admitted. He even sounded different, less pompous and condescending, and more jovial, like a grandfather. "But when you said you wished to speak to him, I asked him myself. He said, 'he was just looking for a good time'."

On cue, the door to the meeting cell burst open and a man with messy, shoulder-length blonde hair and the beginnings of a beard was pulled out in chains by a pair of prison guards. They slammed him up against the bars and forced him to his knees.

"This is the man you stole it from?" Velvet asked, a little impressed at her brother's guts.

"Yes, exactly." He said, turning his face away, "Now why don't we go find ourselves some lunch and- "

"Who are you?" Jaune asked. "And who's the broad?"

"Broad?" Velvet was a little offended at the word.

"Well, see, I'm sort of a missionary-type, here to spread the good word and all that." Neptune said, cutting Velvet off before she could lay into the man, "And this is my sister, Velvet."

"How do you do?" Velvet said warily.

"Oh, well, guess she's not a total loss." Jaune replied.

"I beg your pardon?" she said indignantly.

This time Watts cut her off, yelling something across the yard before excusing himself to deal with it.

"Ask him about the box." Neptune hissed in her ear.

"Right, um, we found- um, excuse me." Jaune had looked away when Watts had left and was staring at him in contempt. "Yes, we, uh, we found your puzzle box, and we've come ask you about it."

"No." Jaune said, the pieces coming together in his head.

"No?" Velvet was confused.

"No. you've come to ask me about Hamunaptra."

Velvet was stunned while Neptune indicated to him to keep the talk quiet. "How do you know that the box pertains to Hamunaptra?"

"Because that's where I was when I found it. I was there." He explained.

Neptune looked skeptical and approached the cell. "Well, how do we know that's not a pile of bull shit?"

Jaune clicked his tongue. "You seem familiar. Do I know you from somewhere?"

"No, no, no." Neptune said, trying to deflect, "I've just got one of those faces- "Recognition dawned on Jaune and he punched Neptune square in the jaw. The guards saw this and one of them hit him in the back with their club. His face screwed up in agony, but he rode it out without so much as a groan.

Velvet ignored the violence and confidently approached the cell. "You were actually at Hamunaptra?" her eyes were practically sparkling in curiosity.

"Yeah, I was there." He said with a roguish grin.

"You swear?"

"Every damn day." He smiled.

"No, I-I didn't mean like that- "

"Yeah, I know what you meant. I was there. Seti's place. 'City of the Dead'."

"Could you tell me how to get there?" she asked eagerly. Jaune looked at her with surprise. This was new. "I mean, the exact location?"

"You want to know?"

"Well, yes."

"You really want to know?"

"Yes!"

He beckoned her closer and suddenly reached out, grabbed her chin and pulled her into a kiss. When he pulled off, he said, "Then get me the hell out of here!"

The guards began to beat him again, but this time he fought back, if briefly. "Do it, lady!" he yelled as the guards dragged him back into the prison.

"Where are they taking him?" she asked Watts.

"To be hanged." Watts explained. "Apparently, he had a very good time."

Prisoners gathered in droves around the execution grounds and cheered as Jaune ascended the steps of the gallows. Watts sat in a viewing gallery alongside Velvet, observing the proceedings.

"I will give you 100 lien to spare this man's life." Velvet said desperately.

"Madame, I would pay 100 lien just to see him hang." Watts replied.

"Two! 200 lien!"

"Proceed."

"300 lien!"

Down below, the hangman placed the noose around Jaune's neck and tightened it.

"Any last requests, pig?" he asked maliciously.

"Yeah, loosen the knot and let me go." He said sarcastically. The hangman was confused by the request and relayed it to Watts.

"What are you, an idiot? Of course, we're not going to let him go!" Watts yelled down. The hangman slapped Jaune upside the head for making him look the fool.

"500 lien!" Velvet offered.

Watts ordered a halt and turned to her. "And what else?" he placed his hand on her leg. "I'm a very lonely man."

She slapped his hand with her book, and he pulled away. Prisoners all around the yard laughed at him. He ordered for the execution to proceed.

"NO!" Velvet cried uselessly. The floor beneath Jaune gave out and he fell. The rope pulled taut and he began to swing. He grunted as he tried to breathe.

Watts laughed in triumph. "Ha ha! His neck did not break! I'm so sorry miss. Now, we must watch him strangle to death."

Seeing her only guide dying before her, Velvet knew she had no choice. She played her trump card. "He knows the location to Hamunaptra!"

He rounded on her in disbelief. "You lie!"

"I would never!"

"Are you telling me that this filthy, god-less son of a pig knows where to find the City of the Dead?"

"Yes."

"Truly?"

"Yes! And if you set him free, we'll give you... 10% of the treasure."

"50%." He fired back.

"20." She offered.

"40."

"30."

"25."

"Ah!" she caught him. "Deal."

He cursed himself for not keeping track. "Cut him down!" The guard that had led Jaune up the stairs cut the rope he hung from with a sword. When Jaune hit the dirt, the prisoners burst into cheers for one of their own. Jaune looked up and saw Velvet looking down on him triumphantly. The message was clear.

I did my bit. Time for you to do yours.

A few days later, a large white riverboat sat docked in Vacuo's Port District. It was still undergoing the loading process as Velvet and Neptune walked up, luggage in tow.

"Do you really think he's going to show up?" Velvet asked her brother.

"Knowing my luck, without a doubt." He answered.

"But how can you be so sure?"

"Velvs, trust me, I've seen the type a thousand times. He may be a cowboy, but his word is his bond."

"Well, personally, I think he's filthy, rude, a complete scoundrel. I don't like him one bit."

"Anyone I know?" came a voice from behind. The siblings turned to see Jaune coming up behind them. His hair had been cut, his beard shaven off, and he was dressed in a white dress shirt, a tan coat and pants, brown boots and a leather rucksack over one shoulder. Neptune nodded a greeting, while Velvet stood staring with her mouth open.

"Oh, uh, hello." Velvet said when she finally recovered. "How much of that did you hear?"

"Enough." He said with a grin.

"Good day to start an adventure, am I right Arc?" Neptune said, offering Jaune his hand.

"Yeah. Yeah, real great." He said with sarcasm, politely shaking the man's hand. "Oh, before I forget, no hard feelings about the, uh..." he indicated his nose.

"Bah, all's forgiven. Happens all the time."

"He's not joking about that." Velvet interjected, rolling her eyes. "But, Mr. Arc, can you look me in the eye and guarantee me this isn't all some kind of a... flimflam?"

"Okay, first off, 'flimflam'? Second, let me tell you something, lady, my whole damned garrison believed in this so much, that without orders we marched from our post on the other side of the continent to find that city. And when we did, all we found was sand and blood." He let his words hang in the air before speaking again. "Let me get your bags for ya."

Velvet stared after him as he walked up the gang plank. Neptune saw the look on her face and grinned.

"Yes, yes, you're right. Filthy, rude, a complete scoundrel. Nothing to like there at all." He teased.

"Oh, shut it, you." She shot back.

"A bright good morning to all." Watts said as he came up next to them, thankfully in a fresh set of clothes.

"Oh, what are you doing here?" Velvet whined.

"I'm here to protect my investment. Thank you very much." He said as he made his way on board.

"This is gonna be a looong trip, isn't it?" Neptune asked.

"Yyyep." Velvet responded with a pop.

...........3............

The shattered moon shone as full as it could over the nearly-cloudless night. The riverboat was moving steadily along downriver, but unbeknownst to anyone, a group of Faunus in all black were paddling up alongside it in a pair of rowboats. One of the men, who had lost a hand some time ago, affixed a hook to his wrist and began sharpening it.

Neptune was sitting at a card table with three very familiar and unpopular men.

"Stop messing with yer glasses and cut the damn cards, Sky." Dove Bronzewing said.

"Well, without my glasses, I can't see the deck to cut it, can I Dove?" Sky Lark quipped.

"Ah, Jaune, take a seat." Neptune said when he saw the blonde walk onto the deck. "We could use another player."

"I only gamble with my life, never my money." Jaune declined.

"Never?" Dove said as he dealt the players their hands. "What if I was to bet you 500 lien, says we get to Hamunaptra before you?"

Jaune stiffened when he heard this. "You're looking for Hamunaptra?"

"Damn straight we are." Cardin Winchester responded.

"And who says we are?"

"Him." Team C_DL said in unison, pointing at Neptune. He tried to look innocent when Jaune glared at him.

"Well, how 'bout it? Is it a bet?" Dove asked.

Jaune grinned. "Alright, you're on."

"And what makes you so confident, if I may ask?" Dr. Oobleck asked. He was sitting nearby, reading a large book and smoking a hookah.

"What makes you?" he asked back.

"Well, we got us a man who's actually been there." Cardin answered.

"Oh, what a coincidence, cuz Jaune here- "Neptune said before Jaune hit him with his rucksack as he slung it over one shoulder. He took the hint. "Right, so is it my play? Whose move is it?"

"Gents, we got ourselves a wager." Jaune said, putting his free hand on Neptune's shoulder and squeezed hard. "G' Night all."

One of the rowboats pulled up along the boat on the same side where Velvet just so happened to be reading by herself at a table. Jaune threw his rucksack on the table with a thud, scaring her.

"Sorry." He said genuinely. "Didn't mean to scare you."

"Mr. Arc, the only thing about you that scares me are your manners." She said sharply.

He inhaled sharply. "Still angry about that kiss, eh?"

"If you call that a kiss." She grinned.

He chuckled. At least she has a sense of humor. He opened his rucksack to reveal it full of guns and knives of all sorts.

"Um, did I miss something?" Velvet asked, confused, "Are we going into battle?"

"Lady, there's something out there." Jaune said, inspecting one of his revolvers. "Something underneath that sand." He put the revolver into one of his holsters.

"Yes, well, I'm hoping to find a certain artifact. A book, actually. My bother thinks there's treasure. What do you think's out there?" she asked, pulling a knife out and inspecting it.

"In a word? Evil. The Bedouins and Tuaregs believe that Hamunaptra is cursed." He took the knife from her, put it back and began cleaning a shotgun.

"Well, I'm afraid I don't believe in fairy tales and hokum, Mr. Arc, but I do believe one of the most famous books in history is buried out there. The Book of Light. It contains within it all the secret incantations of the old kingdom." She was smiling ear to ear just talking about it. "It's what first interested me in Vacuo when I was a child. It's why I came here. Sort of a life's pursuit."

"And the fact that they say that it's made out of solid gold makes no difference to you, right?"

"You know your history!" Velvet said happily.

"I know my treasure." Jaune corrected. He finished up with the shotgun and moved on to a semi-auto handgun.

Velvet fidgeted nervously, her ears dropping a little behind her head. "Um, by the way, why did you kiss me?"

Jaune laughed at the memory. "I was about to die. Seemed like a good idea at the time." Velvet stood up and walked away indignantly. Jaune turned around, gun in one hand, magazine in the other. "What?"

He heard a sound off to the side. Calmly, he inserted the magazine and chambered a round before walking over and discovering the source; a young-looking man with silver hair. Jaune grabbed him by the back of the neck and pinned him against the luggage.

"What a surprise! My old friend, you're alive! I was so worried!"

"Well if it ain't my little buddy Mercury? I think I'll kill you." He aimed the gun at Mercury's chest.

"Woah, woah, think of my kids!" he protested.

"You don't have any kids." Jaune said, not buying his crap.

"Someday I might."

"Shut up!" he shoved him back. "So, you're the one leading the Valeans. I might have known. So what's the scam, Merc? You take them out into the middle of the desert, and you leave them to rot?"

"Unfortunately, no." Mercury said, truthfully. "They may not look it, but these guys are smart. They only gave me half. I get the rest when I get them back to Vacuo. Looks like I gotta go round trip this time."

"Thems the breaks, huh?" Jaune let him go and holstered his pistol on his hip.

"Why do you even care, Arc? You never believed in Hamunaptra. Why're you going back?"

Jaune looked over at Velvet, who was petting one of the camels. It seemed to like it, with how it was groaning. "You see that girl? She saved my neck."

Mercury looked Velvet up and down and grinned. "You always did have more balls than brains." He said with a laugh. Jaune laughed with him for a little before grabbing him again.

"Good bye Merc." Jaune said before throwing the man overboard with a splash.

He turned back to his rucksack and started rolling it back up when he noticed foot prints on the floor. Wet ones. He checked over the side. Mercury was still in the drink, so who...

In her stateroom, Velvet was in a nightgown, going over notes about the Bembridge scholars. However, she seemed distracted. She couldn't quite finish her sentences, and she seemed to be somewhere else mentally.

"Oh, for heaven's sake, girl, it wasn't that good a kiss anyway!" she said to herself with a huff.

She set her book on her sink as she began to brush her hair. The book fell and she picked it up with an exasperated sigh. When she stood back up, she saw the man with the hook in her mirror. She gasped and would have screamed if it hadn't died in her throat when the man grabbed her by the neck, pinned her against the wall and put his hook against her face.

"Where is the map?" he asked. She could feel how sharp the blade was.

"T-there!" she pointed to the table in the middle of the room.

"Good. Now, where is the key?"

"The-the-the key? What key?" she asked. He pressed harder, a thin line of blood falling down her cheek.

"Velvet!" Jaune yelled before he kicked in the door, a revolver in each hand. He aimed at the Hook Man, who used Velvet as a human- Faunus- whatever, a shield. Another man burst open the room's window. Jaune gunned him down before he could react, filling the wall with holes and accidentally knocking off the oil lamp. It fell onto the couch, setting it on fire.

Her captor distracted, Velvet grabbed the candle that was resting on the map and drove it into the eye of her captor, who cried out in agony.

She took cover behind Jaune as he led her out, gunning down another man in black who took the place of his comrade in the window. She ran down the hallway before turning back around.

"The map! I forgot the map!" she yelled, running back to her room.

Jaune caught her by the arm and pulling back beside him. "Relax. I'm the map. It's all up here." He pointed to his head.

"That's comforting." Velvet said sarcastically.

The Hook Man walked around the room, clutching his wounded eye, when he spotted the small puzzle box on the floor.

"The key." He said. He moved to retrieve it.

"Velvs!" Neptune said as he ran into the room. Upon entry, he accidentally knocked the Hook Man into the couch, setting him on fire. Neptune went for the puzzle box, but the Hook Man got there first. He chased Neptune out of the room and down the hall, burning bright and swinging his hook wildly.

The deck of the ship was in a panic. The men in black had set fire to it. Men were trying to evacuate the horses, while others were trying to abandon ship. Jaune led Velvet onto the deck giving her his rucksack. He leaned against a wall as he reloaded a revolver, taking cover from an assailant with a rifle. As he reloaded, bullet holes began popping up on the wall next to him. They slowly creeped toward his head and would have killed him if Velvet didn't pull him out of the way. Silently thanking her, he grabbed the other revolver and began laying down suppressive fire as they moved to the other side of the ship.

"Can you swim?" he yelled over the din when they reached the other side of the ship.

"Well, of course I can swim, if the occasion calls for it!" Velvet yelled back.

"Trust me." He said, picking her up bridal style. "It calls for it." He tossed over the side with a scream. He moved to follow her, but was tackled by another man in black.

The man landed four solid shots to Jaune's face, then kicked him into a pole. He punched him again before choking him. Suddenly, Jaune bent his arms, loosening his grip on his neck, then headbutted his attacker and witched places with him. Jaune ducked another punch and landed a quick series of blows to the gut, spinning the man around. He kicked the man's rear and sent him through a door which burst into a gout of fire.

Jaune picked up his rucksack and slung it across his back as Watts ran up.

"Arc! Arc! What do we do? What are we going to do?"

"Stay here!" Jaune said, "I'll go get help!" he vaulted the railing and landed in the river.

Watts stood on the deck for a moment until he realized what had happened. With a curse, he threw himself after Jaune.

Nearby, Team C_DL was in a firefight with the boarders, hooting and howling as they fired at their assailants. Oobleck sat in cover nearby, scared stiff. Neptune ran up next to them and sighed at their behavior.

"Valeans." He said with exasperation. Suddenly, the flaming Hook Man ran on deck and made a move at Neptune. Cardin saw this and unloaded into the man, sending him overboard. "Hot damn, nice shooting! And did I lose my cool?" he brought up the puzzle box. "I think not." The balcony above him started to collapse, forcing both parties to abandon ship or be crushed by the debris.

A few minutes later, two groups washed up on opposite sides of the river. On one side, Team C_DL, along with Oobleck and Mercury, was leading the majority of the survivors and the horses onto the beach. On the other, Jaune, Velvet, Neptune and Watts washed up.

"We've lost everything!" Velvet wailed. "All our tools, all our equipment! All my clothes!"

"Hey! Hey Jaune!" Mercury yelled from across the river. "Looks like I got all the horses!" he bragged.

"Hey Merc! Looks to me like you're on the wrong side of the river!" Jaune yelled back.

Mercury scoffed until he looked around. He began swearing profusely when he realized that Jaune was right.

.............4.............

The next morning, the group was preparing to leave from a village they had come across the night before. While Velvet was with the young women of the village, and Watts was being attacked by some of the older women, Neptune and Jaune were busy haggling with a man for some camels to get them across the desert.

"I only want four, not a damn herd of them!" Neptune told the man, who kept insisting on selling him more.

"Will you just pay the man? For Gods' sake!" Jaune told him.

"Fine." He grumbled, pulling out his wallet and handing over a couple hundred lien. "Can't believe the price of these fleabags."

"Y' know, we probably could've gotten them for free." Jaune said, taking the reigns of a pair of camels. "All we'd have to do is give him your sister."

"She's not actually my sister, though it is a tempting offer isn't it."

"Yeah." Jaune said, seeing Velvet walk up in the clothing of the native women. She wore black sheer cloth over her chest and legs, and a veil over her face leaving only her eyes visible. She wore the traditional cloth over her hair as well, out of respect for local custom. "Awfully tempting." Velvet caught him staring and smiled.

As the sun began to set, the group set off across the desert on camel back. They traveled single file, with Jaune leading the way, and Watts in back, thankfully downwind.

"Never did like camels." Neptune complained. "Filthy buggers. They smell, they bite, they spit." The camera cut to Watts briefly as he spat on the ground.

"I think they're adorable." Velvet said, scratching her camel's head.

They travelled for several days in this manner. Though they moved mostly at night, they still had to contend with the scorching heat and blowing sand, and even so, they pressed onward.

One night, as they continued their trek, Velvet fell asleep in the saddle and would have fallen if not for Jaune being right next to her to lean against. Jaune gently set her back upright before returning to navigating. Neptune and Watts had done the same, though Watts was snoring so loudly that he woke Neptune. Annoyed, the blue-haired boy whacked him with his riding crop before feigning sleep, as Watts started awake with a mumble.

In the distance, Jaune heard the neighing of a horse. On a nearby rock formation, he saw several figures on horseback. The camera zoomed in to show the same group that had seen him leave Hamunaptra several years ago. Blake was also among them, keeping watch.

"This one is strong." She said with a grim smile.

A few days later, the two groups from the boat met up by a cliff face, Jaune leading his group, and Mercury leading his.

"Morning, old buddy." Mercury called to Jaune, who gave a nod of recognition back. The groups stood for a few moments, staring at the open desert, before Dove spoke up.

"Man, what the hell are we doing?" he said, annoyed.

"Simmer down, man. Just be patient." Mercury assured him.

"Remember our bet, Arc." Cardin said. "First one to the city, 500 in cashy money."

"Hundred of those is yours if you help us win that bet." Dove told Mercury.

"Deal."

"Get ready for it." Jaune told his group.

"For what?" Velvet asked.

"We're about to be shown the way."

As the sun crested the horizon, the air began to ripple. To Velvet, it looked to be a mirage, but mirages were never this elaborate. Suddenly, as if the veil that concealed it was blown off by the wind, a rock formation appeared in the distance. Set into it, was an elaborate, clearly ancient ruin. The air ceased rippling and the ruins seemed more solid.

"Here we go again." Jaune half-moaned.

At once, Jaune and Mercury urged their camels forward at a gallop. Team C_DL, Velvet, Neptune and Watts followed soon after, with Oobleck and the workers bringing up the rear.

Camps were soon set up within the ruined city. The larger group quickly claimed the main entrance for themselves and set the diggers to work, with Oobleck directing them, and Cardin supervising and helping if needed.

Jaune's group had claimed an opening towards the rear of the complex. While Velvet was busy polishing a large mirror, Jaune tied a rope around a large column. As he tied the knot, he constantly kept hitting Watts, just for kicks.

Cardin noticed them working away from the rest of the group.

"Hey," he said to Oobleck. "Do they know something that we don't?"

"Possibly, though I doubt it. Ms. Scarlatina is far too young to know much of any real value." Oobleck replied.

"That's a statue of Anubis, god of the underworld." Velvet said. "It's legs go deep underground. According to my research, we should find a secret compartment at the base containing the golden Book of Light."

Jaune walked up to her, his voice a little shaky. "So, uh, what's the deal with these old mirrors?"

"Ancient mirrors." Velvet corrected. "It's an ancient Vacuoan trick. You'll see."

"Right. Uh, here, this is for you." He handed her a small cloth roll. "It's just something I, uh, borrowed off my Valean brethren. Should serve you fair to middling when your, uh. Yeah. What're you lookin' at?" he said to Watts, who said his hands defensively. Velvet opened it up to find a set of semi-new archaeology tools.

"Look out for bugs." Watts said as Jaune descended the rope. "I hate bugs."

A few minutes later, they were standing in a dark room filled with cobweb, the only light coming from the hole they came in from and the torch Jaune held.

"Do you realize that we're standing in a room nobody has entered in over 3000 years?" Velvet said with wonder.

Neptune was the next down the rope. "Whooo, what is that Gods-awful stench?" he looked back and saw Watts coming down behind him. "Oh."

Velvet walked over to one of the many mirrors, dusted it off and carefully positioned it. "And then there was light." She said as the mirror reflected the light of the sun off of several mirrors, thus illuminating the room.

"Hey, that is a neat trick." Jaune said.

"Oh my Gods." Velvet said. "It's a sah-netjer."

"Say what now?"

"A preparation room."

"Preparation for what?"

"For entering the afterlife." Velvet said, trying to sound all spooky.

"Mummies, dude, this is where they made the mummies." Neptune clarified.

The group went down a corridor off to the side of the preparation room. Jaune drew his pistol and led the way, torch before him. As they made their way, they heard a strange skittering sound, as if a swarm of bugs had just washed over them. They scrambled around a bit until it stopped.

"What the hell was that?" Neptune asked.

"Sounded like... bugs." Jaune said.

"He said bugs!" Velvet whisper-yelled.

"What do you mean bugs? I hate bugs."

They exited the corridor and entered a new chamber. Inside was the base of the statue they had seen outside.

"The legs of Anubis." Velvet said. "The secret compartment should be hidden somewhere inside here."

As she moved to inspect the statue, whispers could be heard all around. Jaune determined they were coming from behind the statue, and moved Velvet behind him. He handed her the torch and carefully readied his revolvers, one in each hand. Neptune and Watts did the same, readying their own guns. When he neared the edge of statue, he burst around the corner, guns at the ready-

Only to be met by the other dig team, guns levelled at him.

"You sacred the bejesus out of us, Arc." Cardin said with a sigh.

"Likewise." Jaune said.

"Hey, that's my toolkit." Sky said, noticing the kit Velvet hand in her hands.

"No, I don't think so." Jaune said, raising his guns again. Team C_DL did the same.

"Okaaay, maybe I was mistaken." Sky said as he backed away and everyone put down their guns.

"Well, have a nice day, gentlemen. We have a lot of work to do." Velvet said.

"Ah, I believe that this is our dig site." Dr. Oobleck said.

"We got here first." Everyone's guns went up again.

"This here's our statue, friend." Dove said firmly.

"I didn't hear anyone call dibs." Jaune said, "I assume you're all familiar with the International Dibs Protocol." As the boys continued their gun-point bickering, Velvet noticed a crack in the floor. She moved some rocks into it with her foot, and heard them impact on something below them. Her mental wheels turned as the plan came together.

"For goodness sake, let's be nice, kids." Velvet said, pushing Jaune's guns with one arm. "If we're going to play together, we have to learn to share." She gave him a pointed stare. "There are other places to dig."

Quickly, Velvet led her team down deeper into the complex. They came upon a vast room, barren but for a few small statues. Jaune and Neptune stood on these statues, Neptune holding the tools, and Jaune using them on the ceiling. At the moment, he was bashing it with a sledgehammer.

"According to these hieroglyphics," Velvet said, "We're right beneath the statue. We should come up right between his legs."

"And when those damned Cowboys go to sleep- no offense..." Neptune said.

"None taken." Jaune replied, handing him the hammer and taking a pickaxe instead.

"We'll dig our way up and steal the book right out from under them."

"Now, are you sure we can find this secret compartment thing?" Jaune asked Velvet as he swung the pickaxe at where he was just hammering.

"Absolutely, so long as those beastly Valeans haven't beaten us to it. No offense."

"None taken."

"Hey, anyone see where our smelly friend ran off to?" Neptune asked.

...............5...............

Watts was crawling down a passage he could have easily walked down were it not for his entomophobia. When he finally entered a full-sized chamber, he stood and was amazed by the first thing that caught his eye: a carving on the wall of a man covered in strange blue insects.

"What have we here?" he said, putting his torch in the ground next to him so he could see and use both hands. He inspected the insects and thought them to be some kind of precious metal. "Blue gold. This will fetch a pretty penny." He said, pulling out a knife and plucking it off the wall. He held it in his hand to feel the weight of it. Satisfied, he put it in his bag and plucked off another.

Back at the statue, Team C_DL had found the hidden compartment and were preparing to open it. Oobleck was busy brushing dust off a certain hieroglyph when Cardin suddenly went at it with a crow bar.

"Careful!" Oobleck said, grabbing the metal rod. "Seti was no fool. I suggest we let the diggers open it." Motioning to the men who were nervously backing away from the statue.

"I think we should probably listen to the doctor on this one, Cardin." Dove said.

"Yeah, sure. Let them open it." Cardin reluctantly agreed.

Soon, a trio of diggers was working on the panel with crow bars of their own, Team C_DL and Mercury keeping their distance while Dr. Oobleck ordered the men in their native tongue. When they finally managed to remove the panel, they were blasted with some kind of liquid. When the mist from it's release cleared, it was horrific; they had been practically melted. Their skin boiled and burned, and they screamed in agony as Team Asshole yelled in fright.

Down below, Jaune's team was taking a break. Neptune was using one of the tools as a make-shift golf club, using it to hit rocks across the chamber, while Velvet was talking to Jaune about how the ancient Vacuoans mummified people.

"So, lemme get this straight." Jaune said, "They ripped out your guts and stuffed them in jars?"

"And then they'd take out your heart as well." Velvet said, enjoying Neptune's obvious discomfort. "Oh! And do you know how they got your brains?"

"Velvs, I really don't think we need to hear this- "Neptune protested, though he knew it would do no good.

"They took a sharp, red-hot poker, stick it up your nose, scramble things about a bit, and pull it all out through your nostrils."

"Yeesh, that's gotta hurt." Jaune said, rubbing his nose in discomfort.

"It's called mummification. You'd be dead when they do this." She assured him.

"Hey, if I don't make it out of this," Jaune said to Neptune, "Don't put me down for mummification."

"Like wise." Neptune assured him, before hitting another rock. When he hit, the ceiling suddenly came down between them. Neptune stood stock still with a 'did I do that?' feeling blossoming in his chest. Luckily, it wasn't the whole ceiling, just a massive block of carved stone, along with a few large stones from the actual ceiling.

"Oh, my Gods." Velvet said, coughing from the dust. "It's a sarcophagus, buried at the base of Anubis." She looked up and saw the hole where it came from. "He must have been someone of great importance. Or he did something very naughty."

Back with Watts, he had almost cleared the wall of the bejeweled bugs, and was putting another in his bag, when he accidentally dropped it without noticing. It hit the floor without much noise and inexplicably began to shake. Then something burst out of it; a small, skittering beetle. It ran over to Watts' boot and bit into it. Watts noticed this and began to scream as if he felt it crawling up his leg. He felt it climb higher and tore open his shirt.

It wasn't on his skin, it was under it. A lump was moving up his torso, like a migrating tumor, from his waist, up his gut, and disappearing in the middle of his chest. It reappeared crawling up his neck and into his skull.

Velvet and Jaune worked to remove the dirt from the sarcophagus, while Neptune brought around a torch.

"Well, who is it?" he asked. "Does it say?"

"It says 'He That Shall Not Be Named'." Velvet said.

Jaune blew on a piece of metal below the oh-so-specific name, revealing what looked like an eight-pointed star. "This looks like some sort of lock." he said.

"Well, whoever's in here sure as hell wasn't getting out." Neptune commented.

"Yeah, no kidding. It'll take us a month to crack this thing without a key."

"A key..." Velvet muttered. "A key. A key! Now that's what he was talking about!" she said as she dove into a bag.

"Who was talking about what?" Jaune said, confused. He looked to Neptune, who just shrugged.

"The man on the boat. The one with the hook. He asked me about a key." She stood up and held up the puzzle box. She opened it and inserted it into the lock. A perfect fit. Velvet smiled proudly until they heard Watts screaming from the hallway. Jaune took point, gun at the ready, followed by Velvet and Neptune, who grabbed the puzzle box before leaving the chamber.

Watts ran into the hallway, clutching his head and screaming. He ran past the trio, not looking where he was going. He ran to the end of the hallway and rammed his head into the wall with a sickening crunch before falling over stone dead.

That evening, Team C_DL's group camped in the main complex, while Jaune's group camped near their entrance outside the main complex. Velvet and Neptune were sat around a fire, having just finished a simple meal of vegetables and dried meat.

"What do you suppose killed him?" Velvet asked.

"Did you ever see him eat?" Neptune asked back, half-joking.

"Seems our friends from Vale ran into some trouble of their own today." Jaune reported, sitting next to Velvet, shotgun in hand. "Three of their diggers were, uh, melted."

"What?" Velvet said with incredulity.

"How?" Neptune asked.

"Acid." Jaune said plainly. No point mincing the truth. "Pressurized salt acid. Some kind of ancient booby trap."

"Maybe this place really is cursed." Neptune said, throwing a dried stick onto the fire as the wind howled by, threatening to snuff it out.

Velvet rolled her eyes. "For gods- come on now, you two."

"What? You don't believe in superstitions?" Jaune said, poking the fire a bit, moving things around.

"No, I don't." Velvet said with defiance. "I believe that if I can see it and can touch, then it's real. That's what I think."

"Yeah, well, I believe in being prepared." Jaune replied, cocking his shot gun one-handed.

"Well, then, let's see what our friend the warden believed in, huh?" Neptune said as he began digging through the late warden's bag.

He rooted around for a few seconds before retracting his hand, yelling in pain, making Velvet scream next to him and Jaune jump up, ready for a fight.

"What?"

"What is it?"

"Relax," Neptune said, sucking on the cut on his finger. "Just a broken bottle." He pulled out the offending bottle. "Huh. Glenlivet. 12 years old. Say what you will about the stinky bugger, but he had good taste."

As Neptune took a swig from the bottle, Jaune turned at the sound of horses whinnying. He handed the shotgun to Velvet. "Take this and stay here." He ordered as he stood up and drew his revolvers.

"Wait!" Velvet said, following after him. "Wait for me!"

"Velvet, sorry, but didn't the man with the bag full of guns just tell us to stay here?" Neptune protested, following after her.

Bandits began to swarm the camp, firing at random. Oobleck yelled for Cardin and his team to wake up and defend them. The whole team joined the fray, firing and killing the bandits with each shot. Jaune joined in soon after and, after taking some time to find his groove, began dropping bandits as well as C_DL. Velvet also came in, clearly out of her element. She heard a horse whinny behind her and gasped when she saw a bandit charging her. She yelled in fright and fired the gun, killing the rider and throwing her to the ground.

Neptune was kind-of part of the fighting too. He was crouched behind a ruined wall, sipping from the bottle and taking pot shots at passing bandits with a handgun. Mercury ran up next to him, grabbing the bottle from him and taking a long swing. It started to pour out of his mouth when he turned to see a bandit riding at them both, yelling his war cry. Mercury spat in Neptune's face and they both ran for it in opposite directions.

"ARC!" Neptune yelled as the rider chased after him. Thankfully, Jaune heard him and tackled the rider from his horse as they passed. The rider, her mask falling off during the landing to reveal the face of Blake, drew her sword only to have Jaune shoot it from her hands. He turned and shot another rider from his horse. Blake retrieved her sword and knocked Jaune's gun from his hand. He dodged her next two strikes and rolled backwards towards the fire. As he recovered, he lit a stick of TNT in the fire and held it threateningly in front of him.

"Enough!" Blake ordered, not breaking eye contact with Jaune. "Stand down! We will shed no more blood, but you must leave. Leave this place or die." One of the bandits rode up with Blake's horse. "You have one day." She warned as she mounted her horse. She yelled a couple phrases in a language nobody recognized, with six notable exceptions.

At her command, the bandits fell back into the desert. Since the threat was gone, Jaune simply pulled the fuse from the dynamite and pocketed the explosive. He turned and saw Velvet on the ground, shotgun still firmly in her grip.

"Velvet." He walked over and took the gun from her. He tossed it aside as he helped her up. "You okay?"

"Yes. Yes, I'm fine." She said, visibly shaken.

"Ya see? This proves it!" Cardin said. "Ol' Seti's fortune's gotta be under this sand. For them to protect it like that, you know there's treasure down there."

"These Bedouin Faunus are a desert people. They value water, not gold." Jaune said, speaking from experience.

"You know," Sky said, his face still half-covered in shaving cream, "Maybe, just at night, we could, uh, combine forces? For safety reasons?"

Later that night, Neptune was sleeping, and Jaune and Velvet had been drinking. Now, Jaune had been around liquor for a while. He knew how much he could handle, and he knew how to pace himself, so he had a bit of a buzz right now. Velvet however, had never really drunk period. She had no idea what the hell she was doing, and had no idea of her limits whatsoever. Needless to say, she was absolutely smashed. To the point where she had convinced Jaune to teach her some rudimentary fist-fighting. She had a half-way decent stance, and Jaune was showing her how to do a right hook.

"Alright, so just ball up your fist, and put it right here..." he moved her arm into the right spot. "Alright? Now, put it right here and mean it." He put up one his hands as a target.

"Alright... mean it!" Velvet swung, connecting square in the middle of his hand with a satisfying smack. Unfortunately, she lost her balance and turned as she fell. Thankfully, Jaune caught her under the arms and helped her sit down.

"Okay, think it's time for another drink." Jaune said, Velvet giggling the whole time.

Velvet managed to stop giggling long enough to steady her breathing. "Unlike my brother, sir, I know when to say no." she said before taking another swig from the bottle.

"Yeah," Jaune said with a chuckle, "And unlike your brother, you I just don't get."

"Ah." She said, wincing as the liquid burned down her throat. "I know. You're wondering 'what's a place like me doing in a girl like this?'"

"Yeah, something like that."

"Well, you see, Vacuo is in my blood." She said, taking out a small locket. "I never really knew my parents, but according to the matron of my orphanage, my father was a very famous explorer. And he loved Vacuo so much, that he married my mother, who was Vacuoan and quite an adventurer herself."

"Okay. I get your mother, and I get your father. I get him, but..." he pointed at Neptune, "What are you doing here?"

Velvet sighed angrily. "Look, I, I may not be an explorer, or an adventurer, or a treasure hunter, or a- or a gunfighter, Mister Arc, but I am proud of what I am."

"And what is that?" Jaune asked.

"I... am a librarian!" she said with drunken pride. "And now, I am going to kiss you, Mr. Arc."

"Call me Jaune."

Velvet leaned in for the kiss, and Jaune leaned in too, but Velvet's liquor finally caught up to her and she passed out halfway to his lips.

..................6..............

The next day, the teams returned to their respective dig sites. The diggers who had been injured the day before, unfortunately didn't make it through the night, succumbing to their wounds.

And still, Team C_DL pressed onward. They managed to safely remove the slab and uncover the hidden compartment. Another trio of diggers carefully removed a heavy wooden box from within and set it on the ground. Sky blew the dust from the lid, while Oobleck used a rag to remove what didn't. Dove made to open it, but Oobleck warded him back.

"There is a curse upon this chest." He said.

"Curse my ass." Said Dove.

"Yeah, who gives a crap?" Cardin agreed.

"Have a care, Mr. Winchester." Oobleck warned him. "In these hallowed grounds, that which was set forth in ancient times is as strong today as it was then."

"Alright, alright, Doc, we understand." Cardin said defensively, "Now, what's it say?"

Dr. Oobleck began reading the hieroglyphics in the lid, first in the tongue of Ancient Vacuo, then translated. "Death shall come on swift wings for whomsoever opens this chest." When he finished reading, whisper echoed throughout the chamber, wind blew through and the torches flickered. This frightened off the diggers and worried Mercury, but the latter at least stuck around.

"We should not be here." Mercury said, fear creeping up his neck as her drew his revolver.

"It says," Oobleck continued, "There is one, the undead, who, if brought back to life, is bound by sacred law to consummate this curse."

"Well, then let's make sure we don't bring anybody back from the dead, shall we?" Dove commented.

"He will kill all who open this chest and assimilate their organs and fluids, and in so doing, he will regenerate, and no longer be the undead, but a plague upon this world."

"Well, we didn't come all this way for nothing, did we?" Cardin said.

"That's right." Sky agreed.

"It's the curse." Mercury whispered, all the stories he had heard about Hamunaptra over the years flooding into his mind. He ran from the room in fear, yelling about the curse.

"Stupid, superstitious bastard." Dove growled as Sky and Cardin opened the chest.

Down below, Jaune's team had opened the sarcophagus to discover another inside with the same lock on it. Together, Jaune and Neptune lifted out the inner casket and propped it against the wall.

"Oh, I've dreamt about this since I was a little girl!" Velvet said excitedly.

"You dream about dead guys?" Jaune teased, but it rolled off her as she noticed something.

"Look, the sacred spells have been chiseled off." She pointed to the center of the sarcophagus as Neptune retrieved the key from his pocket. "This man must have been condemned, not just in this life, but in the next as well."

"Huh, tough break." Jaune said.

"Yeah, I'm all in tears." Neptune said with a grunt as he undid the lock. "Now, let's see who's inside, shall we?" Neptune and Jaune grabbed the sides of the casket and pulled as hard as they could. They strained for a few minutes-

When suddenly the lid came off and a blackened skeleton nearly fell out. Everyone screamed in fright for a moment before calming down. Jaune smiled in relief and laughed a little.

"Damn it! I hate when they do that." Velvet said.

"Is he supposed to look like that?" Jaune asked, his face twisting in disgust.

"No, I've never seen a mummy look like this before. He's still... still..."

"Juicy." Neptune and Jaune said together, sharing a high-five afterwards.

"Yes." Velvet agreed, for lack of a better term. "He must be more than 3000 years old and yet it looks as if he's still... decomposing."

"Hey," Jaune said, walking over to the lid, "Look at this."

The unofficial brother-sister pair walked over and saw what he noticed: the inside of the lid had several strange markings on it. Velvet had an idea, but there was only way to find out. She put her hands against the markings and ran the tips of her fingers along them.

"Finger nails." She confirmed. "This man was buried alive. And he left a message." she pointed to some rudimentary hieratic symbols. "Death... is only the beginning."

Back above, Team C_DL and Oobleck was letting the chest air out whatever smoke had built up within and had blasted out at them when they opened it. Inside lay a large something wrapping in coarse linen cloth. Oobleck unwrapped it to reveal a large tome made of black stone with the familiar lock on the front.

"Oh my Gods," Oobleck whisper, "It does exist. The Book of the Dead."

"A book?" Dove said, growing angry. "Who cares about a stupid book? Where's the damn treasure?"

"This, gentlemen, this is treasure."

"See, now that sounds more like Dr. Oobleck." Weiss commented.

"Hell, I wouldn't trade ya for a brass- "Cardin said as he kicked the box. When he did, a side panel came off, revealing a set of five canopic jars, one of which had shattered over the millenia.

"There's your treasure, gentlemen." Oobleck said.

"Well, it's a start." Sky said.

That evening, Velvet was walking by Dr. Oobleck's tent, examining something in her hands, when she noticed the doctor struggling to get the book open. She noticed the lock on the cover, and a plan began formulating her head. She would first have to wait for him to fall asleep, though.

"I believe you need a key to open that." She commented to the doctor before continuing on her way.

"Say, Arc," Cardin said as he, his team and Mercury huddled around the fire at the Jaune's campsite. "What do you think these bad boys will fetch back home?" he showed off his jar.

"We heard you guys found yourselves a nice gooey mummy." Sky commented with a smirk. "Congrats."

"You know, if you dry that fellow out, you might be able to sell him for firewood?" Dove joked.

"Look what I found." Velvet said coming up on the campsite.

"You're in her seat." Jaune said to Mercury.

"Yeah, yeah..."

"Now!"

"Okay, jeez."

"Scarab skeletons. Flesh-eaters." She said as she took her seat between Jaune and Neptune.

"I found them inside our friends coffin. They can stay alive for years feasting on the flesh of a corpse. Unfortunately for our friend, he was still alive when they started eating him."

"So, somebody threw these in with our guy," Jaune said, "and then they slowly ate him alive?

"Very slowly."

"Well, he certainly wasn't a popular guy, whoever he was." Neptune commented.

"Yeah. Probably got a little too frisky with Pharaoh's daughter." Jaune joked.

Velvet chuckled before continuing. "Well, according to my readings, our friend suffered the Hom-Dai, the worst of all Ancient Vacuoan curses, one reserved for only the most evil of blasphemers. In all my research, I've never found an instance of it actually being performed."

"That bad huh?"

"Yes, they feared it so much that they never used it. It's written that if a victim of the Hom-Dai should ever arise, they will bring with them the Ten Plagues of Vacuo."

The mood was silent the rest of the evening until everyone decided to leave and find rest. When Velvet was certain everyone was asleep, she crept over to Ooblecks' tent. The doctor was asleep on his back, his canopic jar in one hand and the book in the other. Carefully, she slipped the book from his hand without waking him, save for a small sigh.

She walked back over to her camp fire and set the book down, before going over to Neptune and searching through his jacket pocket for the key.

"That's called stealing, you know." Jaune said, opening one eye. He was asleep by the fire, and held a shotgun in hand.

"According to you and my brother, it's called borrowing." Velvet said.

"Thought the Book of Light was made out of gold." Jaune said, crawling over next to Velvet.

"It is. This is something else." She said as she tried to open the key. "I think this may be the Book of the Dead."

"The Book of the Dead? Are you sure you wanna be playing around with this thing?"

"It's just a book." Velvet said, unlocking it. "No harm ever came from reading a book." She opened the cover and a gust of wind howled by.

"That happens a lot around here." Jaune observed.

Velvet began reading from the book, speaking in the tongue of Ancient Vacuo. "'Amun Ra. Amun Dei.' It speaks of the night and of the day." She continued in Ancient Vacuoan, and as she did her words echoed down the halls into depths of Hamunaptra. The camera focused on the mummy they had discovered. As she finished the chant, the began to move and howled.

"NO!" Oobleck yelled as he shocked awake. "You must not read from the book!"

The wind began to move strangely. The camels grunted in agitation, and Neptune was started awake with a grunt. A strange buzzing could be heard in the distance, waking everyone as if from an intense dream. They looked to the horizon and saw a strange mass heading right for them at alarming speed.

They began to run as soon as it broke the perimeter and they saw it was a massive swarm of locusts. Oobleck merely crouched in his tent, the insects crawling all over him and the Book of the Dead clutched tightly to his chest.

"What have we done?" he said, looking to the heavens.

....................7.................

Team C_DL ran through the catacombs, driven by fear and adrenaline.

"Where the hell'd they come from?" Cardin yelled.

"I ain't waiting around to find out!" Dove replied.

Sky brought up the rear, followed by several workers. He tripped on a rock jutting up from the floor and fell hard enough to knock his glasses off. As he searched for the keys to his sight, the diggers ran past him and Mercury rounded the corner. He ran past Sky and accidentally stepped on his glasses, crushing them with an audible crack. If he heard it, he obviously didn't care, for he simply kept running. Sky however, did.

He managed to find the shattered spectacles, putting them on to find they no longer had the corrective lenses in them, thus rendering them useless. He squinted in a futile attempt to see as he groped his way down the hall, keeping one arm stretched out in front of him, while the other stayed against the nearest wall. He heard noises and movement off to his right.

"Who's there?" he said. When no one answered, he turned and drew his handgun. "Who's there!?" he repeated with more terror in his voice. Behind him, a humanoid shadow walked through the light at the end of the hall.

Functionally, he was blind without his glasses. Normally, his other senses would be boosted to compensate, but he wasn't totally blind so the boost his senses did receive was almost negligible. Still, the adrenaline coursing through his body had at least heightened his instincts to know when something was creeping up on him. The downside was that this was kind of a bad thing when said thing that was creeping up on him seemed to be literally EVERYWHERE AT ONCE. He spun around so much he began to feel dizzy.

That all stopped when he knew without a doubt that whatever was out there was standing mere inches from him. He turned slowly, and whatever he saw made him scream in terror.

Deeper in, Jaune, Velvet, and Neptune were walking down another hallway, with Jaune in the lead with a shotgun and a torch. They turned a corner and were tossed around when the earth began to shake. A mound of dirt began to rise in front of them and soon erupted with hundreds of skittering beetles.

"Scarabs!" Velvet yelled, grabbing the boys by their shirts, and pulling them the other direction.

"GOGOGO! RUN!" Jaune yelled. He turned and tossed the torch into the swarm, doing little, before unloading a few rounds of buckshot into them. They entered a new chamber and ran down a ramp, Jaune and Neptune jumping onto some pillars off to the side and Velvet to an outcrop in the wall in order to escape. A few scarabs tried to jump for them but were unable to make the jump and fell into the void, with the rest of the swarm just passing them by.

When the storm had passed, Jaune and Neptune looked at where Velvet had taken refuge, only to find it completely barren.

"Velvet?" Jaune said, confused.

"Velvs?" Neptune was more worried.

The rumble of stone heralded Velvet's re-emergence into an unknown section of the ruins. Giving the hidden door no mind, she looked around. She was in some kind of antechamber-

And that was as far as she got when she heard somebody moaning behind her. She looked around the pillar she was leaning on and saw Sky, standing in the middle of the chamber with his back to her.

"Oh, Mr. Lark." Velvet sighed in relief, "Thank goodness. I was just starting to get scared." She moved to turn him around and was horrified to see his eyes were nothing more than bloody sockets.

"My eyes. My eyes!" he slurred, something was wrong with his mouth.

She screamed and turned around to see the mummy they had uncovered, walking out from the shadows. She looked at its' face and saw that it had brown eyes and a fresh tongue. And that answered her questions about Sky's speech.

Sky fell over as Velvet instinctually began backing away from the creature, her every Faunus instinct telling her to run, but her body only partially able to respond. She backed into a wall, and the creature regarded her, looking her up and down. She noticed Sky crawling away behind him.

"Please help me." She whimpered calmly.

"My tongue. He took my tongue!" Sky sobbed.

"Please don't leave me..."

The corpse looked at her, his gaze twisting into a look of confusion.

"Salem?" it said.

On the other side of the wall, Jaune was bashing the wall with the butt of his shotgun.

"Damn it!" he said when nothing gave way and he started inspecting the rudimentary door frame. "Trap door. Must be a switch or something around here someplace."

Suddenly, Cardin and Dove came running back into the room, followed by a digger and the familiar chittering of the scarab horde.

"Run, you sons of bitches, run!" Cardin yelled.

"Go." Jaune said, sending Neptune into flight.

Unfortunately, the digger tripped and fell onto the ramp and was immediately swarmed by the scarabs. His screams were brief. When the insects finally left him, all that remained was a steaming pile of meat and bone.

Velvet tried to escape the mummy, but he just moved everywhere she did, cutting her off at every chance she tried to take.

"Come with me, my Princess Salem." It said in the Ancient Tongue.

Jaune ran by the entrance to the antechamber, but doubled back when he saw her.

"There you are! Will you quit playing hide and seek?" he said running up to her and grabbing her hand. "Come on. Let's get out of here." When she didn't move, he looked at where she was staring and saw it. "WOAH!" he almost dropped his shotgun.

"Velvet?" Neptune yelled as he, Cardin and Dove ran into the chamber, but skidded to a stop when they saw the walking corpse. The corpse turned back to Jaune and roared at him, making Velvet yelp in fright. Jaune simply yelled back at it and pumped it full of lead.

"Move! He said, pushing Velvet into motion.

"Right!" Neptune said, following suit. As they left, the corpse recovered and saw them leave.

The group reached the surface, only to be met by the bandits from the previous night. They cocked their guns and pointed them at them. One of them, who stood nest to Dr. Oobleck, who still clutched the Book of the Dead in his arms, walked forward and pulled down their mask to reveal Blake.

"I told you to leave or die." She said, "You refused. Now you may have killed us all, for you have unleashed a creature we have feared for more than 3,000 years."

"Relax, I got him." Jaune said.

"No mortal weapon can kill this creature." Blake said, growing irritated. "He is not of this world."

A pair of her men carried Sky in and laid him at the feet of Cardin and Dove. He groaned as the men took him into their arms.

"Fucking animals." Cardin said, fury burning in his eyes.

"What did you do to him?" Dove demanded.

"We saved him!" Blake said, ignoring the racist remark. "Saved him before the creature could finish his work. Now leave, all of you, quickly, before he finishes you all." She ordered her men in Faunuspeak, and they began to walk away. "We must now go on the hunt, and try and find a way to kill him."

"I already told you, I got him." Jaune said, not liking being dismissed. Blake stopped and turned to face him, looking him dead in the eye.

"Know this," she said, her voice barely above a whisper, "This creature is the bringer of death. He will never eat, he will never sleep, and he will never stop."

Mercury was still in the catacombs, revolver drawn and torch behind him, jumping at every shadow he saw, every whisper he heard, every breath of wind that passed by him. He backed up a bit and turned to find the mummy standing before him, causing him to drop his torch with a scream.

He slowly began backing up again, the creature following him, as he reached down his shirt and pulled out a small golden cross.

"May the good Lord protect and watch over me, as a shepherd watches over his flock." he prayed. He saw it wasn't working, so he pulled out several more necklaces bearing different religious symbols. He held up one of a sword piercing a crescent moon and began chanting in modern Vacuoan. "No? Okay." he said, giving up and holding up another one, this time one of the Buddha, and began chanting in Old Animanian. He soon gave up on this one too. His back hit the wall and he tried one more, holding up a six-pointed star and speaking Faunuspeak. This time, the mummy stopped.

"The language of the slaves..." it said.

"You may be of use to me. And the rewards..." he held up his hand, revealing a small pile of gold rings and coins. "... Will be great."

"Oh, my prince..." Mercury said reverently, staring at the treasure.

"Now," Mercury looked up at his new benefactor, "Where are the other sacred jars!?" it said angrily.

Up top, the survivors of the expedition ran out of Hamunaptra on their mounts, and as the last one left, a skeletal hand burst from the ground with a roar.

.....................8...................

Vacuo was much the same as they had left it what seemed like years ago. Children ran through the streets and people went about their everyday lives, not knowing the terrible power that lay in the sands. The sky however, reflected the mood of the gang; grey, stormy, and foreboding. Jaune led the crew into Fort Shade, the safest place he could think of that he had access to. It was only through his military past, even as a mere mercenary, that the soldiers allowed him entry, happy to give shelter to a warrior.

"I thought you said you didn't believe in that fairy tales and hokum stuff." Jaune said as he walked out of Velvet's closet with fistfuls of her clothes in hand. He shoo'd a cat off her suitcase and threw them in.

"Well, having an encounter with a 3000 year-old walking, talking corpse does tend to convert one." Velvet said, taking her clothes and putting them back in the closet.

"Well, forget it." Jaune said, grabbing her night gowns from her dresser and tossing them in the suitcase. "We're out the door, we're down the hall, and we're gone."

"Oh, no, we are not." Velvet grabbed her nighties and put them back where they belonged.

"Oh, yes, we are." Jaune grabbed a pile of books and threw them in as well.

"Oh, no, we are not. We woke him up, and we are going to stop him." Velvet began taking out the books one at a time.

"We? What we? We didn't read that book. I told you not to play around with that thing. Didn't I tell you not to play around with that thing?!" Jaune grabbed more books.

"Fine then, me, me, me. I, I, I woke him up and I intend to stop him."

"Oh, yeah? How? You heard the cat. No mortal weapons can kill this guy." Jaune moved for the type-writer.

"Oh, well, then we are just going to have to find some immortal weapons." Velvet took out the books and took the type-writer from him.

"There goes that 'we' again."

"Look, will you just listen to me? We have to do something!" Velvet said as she accidentally closed the suitcase on Jaune's hand, causing him to yell in pain. "Once this creature has been reborn, his curse is going to spread until the whole of Remnant is destroyed."

"Yeah? And is that my problem?"

"Well, it is everyone's problem!"

"Velvet, I appreciate you saving my life and all, but when I signed on, I agreed to take you out there and to bring you back. And I have done that. End of job. End of story. Contract terminated!"

"That's all I am to you? A contract?" Velvet said, putting a little hurt into the words to try and guilt him, but Jaune was having none of that.

"Look, you can either tag along with me or you can stay here, and try to save the world. What's it gonna be?" He tried to make it sound like the obvious choice it was, but Velvet was about as stubborn as he was.

"I'm staying."

"Fine." Jaune said, moving to leave.

"Fine." Velvet fired back.

"Fine."

"Fine."

"Fine." Jaune said, as he closed the door, claiming the win with the last word.

Down in the bar, guests were mingling about as native music was playing in the background. Port was walking around with a female companion of some sort, but he was far different from the one the gang recognized. He was in some sort of military uniform with a pilot jacket and a long trench coat, and was far removed from his usual jovial, bombastic nature.

"I'm the last of the Royal Air Corps stationed out here, you know..." he said with a slight slur as he inadvertently walked into the ground-level fountain. "Some bloody idiot spilled his drink." He let it go and continued with his story, his companion hanging on his every word, a look of sympathy in her eyes, "All the other lads died in the sky and were buried in the sand. Good chaps, every one of them, too." He walked by Jaune, who gave him a short hello and made for the bar.

Port let his companion go, knowing she had better things to do than listen to an old drunk talk of the glory days, and followed after Jaune.

"You know, Arc, ever since the end of the Great War, there hasn't been a single challenge worthy of a man like me." He said as Jaune took a seat next to Neptune, who was looking at the key that had started this whole thing and couldn't help thinking that it was all his fault for stealing it from Jaune in the first place. Seeing who was following Jaune, Neptune stashed the key in his chest pocket.

"Yeah? Well, we all got our little problems today, don't we, Pete?" Jaune said as Neptune poured him a shot.

"I just wish I could have chucked it in with the others and gone down in flame and glory, instead of sitting around here, rotting of boredom and booze." He took the shot Neptune had poured for himself and downed it. "Oh well, back to the airfield, ha-ha!" he said in his usual tone, clapping the boys on the backs as he left.

When he had left, Jaune immediately changed the subject. "So tell me, has your sister always been..."

"Oh yeah, always." Neptune cut in, having heard the question a million times before.

"Well, we're all packed up, but the damn boat doesn't leave till tomorrow morning." Cardin said as he and Dove came up to the bar.

"Tail set firmly between your legs, I see." Neptune said.

"Yeah, well, you can talk. You don't have some sacred walking corpse after you."

"So, uh, how's your friend?" Jaune asked.

"He had his eyes and his tongue ripped out. How would you be?" Dove said with a little venom. Jaune didn't take it personally, knowing he would feel the same in their boots.

Up in his room, Sky was doing his best to entertain a rather mysterious guest. He was in his pajamas and a robe, with heavy gauze wrappings covering his eyes. His guest was in heavy robes all over his body and a mask, impractical clothing for a desert climate, but he didn't seem to mind.

"I'm so... pleased to meet you." Sky choked out, holding his hand out to be shaken. His host recoiled and a hand grabbed his wrist.

"Prince Ozpin does not like to be touched." Mercury told him, moving his arm back. "A silly southern superstition, I'm afraid."

"Please, forgive me." Sky said, reaching for some coffee, only to spill it.

"Oops." Mercury said, feigning concern for the blind man. "Mr. Lark, Prince Ozpin thanks you for your hospitality." Sky tried to act humble and shit, but his face dropped at Mercury's next words. "And for your eyes. And your tongue. But I'm afraid more is needed. The prince must finish the job." He backed away from the doomed man. "He must consummate the curse that you and your friends have brought down upon yourselves."

Sky pleaded for mercy as Ozpin removed the mask, revealing a rictus smile.

The boys in the bar toasted their glasses and took a drink, only to spit them out a second later, along with every other patron in the bar.

"Gods..." Cardin said, trying to get the taste out of his mouth, "Tastes just like- "

"Blood." Jaune finished. He walked to the fountain and saw that it was now pouring out blood.

"'And the rivers and waters of Vacuo ran red, and were as blood'." Neptune said, reciting the Bible passage perfectly.

"He's here." Jaune whispered, looking around.

Thunder rumbled as Velvet walked outside, reading a book in one hand and carrying another in the other hand.

"Oh, Velvet!" Jaune said, running up to her.

"Oh, so you're still here, are you?" she said flippantly.

"We've got problems." Jaune said with a nervous chuckle.

Thunder rolled overhead again, louder this time, and suddenly fire began falling from the sky. Men and women screamed as they ran for cover. Jaune grabbed Velvet's arm and tried to pull her to somewhere safe, staying under cover from the fireballs, while the soldiers in the courtyard fared far worse, a few being immolated as they scrambled about, others killed by their ammo cooking off. Buildings all over the city were destroyed, and even the great pyramids were not spared.

Mercury hurried down a staircase next to Jaune and Velvet, only to quickly turn around and run back up. Too late, though. Jaune had seen him.

"Hey!" Jaune yelled, bounding up the stairs, catching Mercury by the shirt and pinning him to the wall. "Mercury, you little stink-weed, where've you been?" A familiar roaring from upstairs gave Jaune pause, and Mercury took the chance to escape. Jaune drew a revolver and followed the noise to its source, Velvet hot on his heels.

They came to Sky's room to find a dried-up husk of the man in question sitting in his chair, clothing and bandages still on. They looked up and saw Ozpin regenerating himself. He had regained much of his former muscle mass, his skin, while still dried out and wrinkly, covered much more of his body and his face was now far more defined. He roared at the pair when the process ceased.

"We are in serious trouble." Jaune said, utterly amazed and horrified at the same time.

He drew his other revolver as Ozpin approached and unloaded into the undead man, to no effect. Ozpin, his strength enhanced by his curse, shoved Jaune, sending him flying across the room and crashing into Neptune, Cardin, and Dove, who had just entered the room.

Ozpin approached Velvet, speaking in ancient Vacuoan, "You saved me from the undead. I thank you." He leaned in for a kiss, but stopped when he heard a note from a piano. He turned and saw a cat walking onto the keys. He roared in horror and summoned a sand tornado to take him away, shutting the doors to the balcony behind him.

Jaune propped himself up and sighed. "We are in very serious trouble."

Velvet led the group to the museum she worked at, reasoning that they could find answers, or at the very least information, within.

"He does seem to like you, Velvs." Neptune commented,

"Yeah, what's that about?" Jaune asked knowingly.

"What's this guy want, anyway?" Cardin asked.

"There's only one person I know who can possibly give us any answers." Velvet said, leading them to Ilia's office. They turned a corner into the antiquities room to find Ilia deep in conversation with Blake.

"You!" she yelled, her male companions all drawing their weapons and training them on Blake.

"Miss Scarlatina." Ilia said calmly. "Gentlemen." She nodded curtly at the boys.

"What is she doing here?" Velvet questioned.

Ilia and Blake shared a look. "Do you really want to know, or would you rather just shoot us?"

"After what I just saw," Jaune said, putting his gun away, "I'm willing to go on a little faith here."

"We are part of an ancient secret society." Ilia explained, the conversation having moved to a new room, "For over 3000 years, we have guarded the City of the Dead. We are sworn at adulthood to do any and all in our power to stop the High Priest Ozpin from being reborn into this world."

"And now, because of you, we have failed." Blake said.

"And you think this justifies the killing of innocent people?" Velvet questioned.

"To stop this creature? Let me think."

"YES." Ilia and Blake said together.

"Question." Jaune said, raising a finger, "Why doesn't he like cats?"

"Cats are the guardians of the underworld." Ilia explained, making Blake smile just a bit, "He will fear them until he is fully regenerated."

"And then he will fear nothing." Blake finished.

"Yeah, and you know how he gets himself fully regenerated?" Dove said.

"By finding everyone who opened that chest." Cardin started.

"And sucking 'em dry! That's how!" Dove was hysteric with fear, while Cardin was externally calm, trying to be the rock his friend needed.

"When I saw him alive at Hamunaptra, he called me Salem." Velvet said, broaching a subject that had been nagging her. "A-and just now in Mr. Lark's quarters, he- he tried to kiss me."

"It's because of his love for Salem that he was cursed." Ilia said, looking to Blake, who was leaning over her, "Apparently, even after 3000 years..."

"He is still in love with her." Blake finished.

"Yes, well, that's very romantic and all, but what has it got to do with me?"

"Perhaps he will once again try to raise her from the dead." Blake suggested to Ilia.

"Yes." She agreed. "And it appears he has already chosen his human sacrifice." They looked to Velvet.

"Over my dead body." Neptune said angrily.

"Although, this may give us just the time we need to kill the creature." Ilia mused, a plan slowly coming together in her head.

"We will need all the help we can get." Blake said, looking to the sky, "His powers are still growing."

Everyone followed her gazed. The sun was being swallowed in an eclipse.

"And he stretched forth his hand toward the heavens, and there was darkness throughout the lands of Vacuo." Neptune said, reciting the Bible again.

Back at the fort, the soldiers manning the ramparts were amazed at this freak cosmological event. The next solar eclipse in Vacuo wasn't predicted to occur for a few years, and a total eclipse in this area was decades away at best.

"We must stop him from regenerating." Velvet stated in her room, the adventurers having unofficially decided to make it their temporary base. "Who opened that chest?"

"Well, there was me and Dove here." Cardin said. "Oh, and Sky, of course."

"There was that historian fella as well." Dove threw in.

"What about my buddy Mercury?" Jaune asked.

"No, he scrammed out of there before we opened the damn thing." Dove replied.

"Yeah, he was the smart one." Cardin chuckled.

"Well, that sounds about right." Jaune mused.

"Then, we need to find Dr. Oobleck and bring him back to the safety of the fort before the creature can get to him." Velvet said, thinking the plan very obvious.

Jaune agreed. "Right. She stays here. You three, come with me." His version of the plan was met with protests and complaints. Sighing, he turned around, picked Velvet up, throwing her over his shoulder, and deposited her on her bed. He locked the door behind him and grabbed Dove by the collar, bringing them nearly nose-to-nose. "This door doesn't open. She doesn't come out, and no one goes in. Right?"

"Right." Dove nodded his head furiously.

"Right?" Jaune looked to Cardin who shook his own head. He gave Dove the key and began walking away. "Come on, Neptune."

"Oh, uh, I thought I could just stay at the fort- "

"Now!"

"Right. We're just gonna go fetch the historian guy." He said to C_D_ as he hurried after Jaune.

......................9.....................

Dr. Oobleck ran through deserted streets, canopic jar in one hand, The Book of the Dead in the other. The slightest disturbance gave him pause as he looked for anyone following him. And why shouldn't he? He knew of the supposed 'curse' he and the Valean treasure seekers had unleashed, and after what he had heard happened to Mr. Lark, he was beginning to believe it. And he should, for unbeknownst to him, Ozpin was stalking him through the streets, chasing him in circles, waiting for a chance to make his move.

Mercury, meanwhile, was ransacking the doctor's office, going through everything in his search for the very objects that weren't there and not giving a damn for subtlety.

"Well, well, well." Jaune said as he and Neptune walked through the door. "Let me guess. Spring cleaning?"

Mercury ran for the window, but Jaune cut him off when he threw a chair at his back, knocking him to the floor.

"Damn. Nice shot." Neptune said.

"Aw, Merc, did you fall down? Here, let me help you up." Jaune said as he picked Mercury up by his collar and slammed him against the wall. "You came back from the desert with a new friend, didn't you, Merc?"

"What friend? You are my only friend." Mercury said, poorly trying to play innocent.

Jaune slammed him against a desk on the opposite side of the room. "What the hell are you doing with this creep anyway? Huh? What's in it for you?"

"It is better to be the right hand of the devil than in his path. As long as I serve him, I am immune."

Jaune slammed him against a set of cabinets.

"Immune from what?" he asked as Mercury shook the stars from his eyes. Mercury responded in a language Jaune didn't recognize. "What was that?"

"I don't wanna tell you, you'll just hurt me some more." Mercury said quickly.

"What are you looking for?" Jaune said, moving him to the middle of the room, "And try not to lie to me." Jaune lifted him off the floor, holding his face mere inches from the spinning blades of a ceiling fan.

"The book!" Mercury yelled in terror. "The black book they found at Hamunaptra! He wants it back. He told me it would be worth its weight in gold."

"What does he want the book for?" Neptune asked. Jaune lowered Mercury so he could answer.

"Oh, come on, I don't know." Jaune shoved him back up. "Something about bringing his dead girlfriend back to life. But that's all. He just wants the book, I swear!" Jaune lowered him. "And your sister. But other than that- "

His words were cut off by a shrieking from outside. Mercury took the chance and sucker-punched Jaune in the gut, then jumped out the window onto the streets. Jaune and Neptune looked out the window he smashed to see the dried up husk of Bartholomew Oobleck lying in the street, the black-robed form of Ozpin looming over him holding the black book under one arm.

He knelt down and took the canopic jar from the corpse's grip and turned to face his pursuers. More of his skin had returned, more defining his features- he actually had something of a nose-, but it was pale and sickly, and still had sizable gaps. He opened his mouth impossibly wide and roared, a swarm of flies issuing forth from him. Jaune and Neptune closed the wooden doors on the window, preventing the insects entry, while the people in the streets had to suffer them.

"Well, that's two down, two to go." Jaune said.

"Then he'll be coming after Velvet." Neptune finished.

Back at the room, Dove and Cardin were growing bored on guard duty. Cardin was sitting at the table, looking at his canopic jar, while Dove was at the window, passing time by watching the soldiers perform evening drill maneuvers.

"To hell with this!" Dove said, slamming his fist on the window sill in frustration, "I'm going downstairs, get myself a drink. You want anything?" he asked Cardin.

"Yeah. Yeah, get me a glass of bourbon." He replied absent-mindedly.

"All right."

"A-and a shot of bourbon." Cardin got up and followed after him, leaving the jar in his chair

"Yeah, okay, okay."

"And a bourbon chaser!"

"Yeah, yeah, I'll get your damn bourbon."

"Don't worry about the door!" he called after his friend, slamming the door shut. They had always been like this, ever since high school. It helped him relax to fall back into old routines. He turned back and saw the jar. Might as well indulge in those routines he thought as he fell into a pseudo-ready. He drew his revolver with a flourish and pointed it at the jar. He flipped it forwards, stopping it back in position, then returned it to its holster with another flourish. If he so chose, he easily could have become a professional trick-shooter, like that Oakley woman back in Vale.

Suddenly the wind howled from the open window, making Cardin draw his gun in alarm. He aimed at where the wind came from, but saw nothing. Trusting nothing, he chambered a round and approached cautiously. Looking out, he saw and heard nothing, not even the guards that had been out there mere moments earlier. Thinking everything safe, he lowered the hammer on his revolver.

This lapse of judgement was rewarded when a wave of sand shot into the room with a roar. A full-blown sand storm filled the small room and the shadow of Cardin could be seen being lifted bodily off the ground and shriveled into skin and bones by Ozpin's magic. The storm subsided, and Ozpin stepped into view. His skin was almost fully healed; it was a healthy pigment and covered most of his body, save for a hole in his neck and cheek. His signature silver-grey hair was also present. He looked to the locked door to Velvets room. As he stood there, a scarab beetle skittered out of his neck hole and into his cheek, where he bit down, killing the insect with a crunch and a squeal before he began chewing on it.

In her bedroom, Velvet was sleeping soundly, unaware as sand began pouring in through the keyhole, forming a small pile at the base of the door. This sand reformed into the shape of Ozpin, who approached the sleeping rabbit Faunus and sat down next to her. Ozpin regarded her.

"Salem." He whispered, before leaning down to kiss Velvet.

This woke her up and she screamed into his lips when she saw him kissing her, and more disgustingly, his skin decaying where their lips met.

Jaune kicked open the doors, Neptune at his side with a small Deringer pistol pointed at Ozpin.

"Hey, get your ugly face off her!" Jaune yelled.

Ozpin glared at him, speaking in old Vacuoan and giving Velvet a chance to get away.

"Hey, look what I got!" he said, holding up a cat.

His eyes widening in terror, Ozpin summoned another sand devil and made a break for it out the open window.

Seeing the coast was clear, Velvet sat up from behind the bed with a sigh.

"You alright?" Jaune asked.

"Well, I'm not sure." Neptune answered.

The trio collected Dove from the bar and quickly made their way to the museum to consult with Ilia and Blake about how to take down Ozpin.

"Okay, according to legend," Velvet said as the group walked up a flight of stairs, "The black book that you and your friends found at Hamunaptra is supposed to bring people back from the dead. Until now, I wasn't exactly willing to believe in it."

"Believe it, sister. That's what brought our buddy back to life." Jaune deadpanned.

"Right. Now, if the black book can bring him to life- "

"Then maybe the gold book can kill him." Jaune finished.

"That's the working theory." Velvet agreed. "Now we just need to find out where the gold book is hidden." The group rounded a corner and found Ilia knelt before a massive stone with hieroglyphics on it, working on the same notion.

Suddenly, Velvet's rabbit ears twitched. "Do you hear that?" she asked. The men shook their heads, but Blake nodded. The two Faunus ran to a nearby window and saw a harrowing sight outside. The poor citizens of the city were marching on the museum, torches and simple weapons in hand, and their faces marred by injury. They marched almost in unison and were chanting a single word, a name: Ozpin.

"Last but not least, my favorite plague, boils and sores." Neptune said, not even bothering with the passage.

"They have become his slaves." Blake explained, "So it has begun. The beginning of the end."

"Not if I have anything to say about it. Come on." Velvet said, rushing back to the stone, Ilia close behind.

Ozpin walked amongst his army, yelling out orders in the ancient tongue. Mercury was close behind, trying his best to keep away from the mindless, hideous slaves. As the army approached the museum, they ran for the door and began slamming it, trying to break it down.

Inside, Velvet and Ilia were translating as fast as they could. Feeling the pressure, Velvet did the only thing she could think of to keep herself calm; talk.

"According to Bembridge scholars, the golden Book of Light is located in the statue of Anubis..."

"That's where we found the black book." Dove said, half-angry, half-scared.

"Well, looks like the old boys at Bembridge were mistaken." Neptune said.

"Exactly, they mixed up the books. Mixed up where they were buried. So, if the black book was in the statue of Anubis, then the golden book must be..."

The army of Ozpin cheered as they finally broke the door and stormed in.

"Come on, Velvs, work faster." Neptune pressed.

"Patience is a virtue." Velvet replied in a sing-song voice.

"Not right now it's not!" Jaune threw back.

"Uh, I think I'll go ahead and get the car started." Neptune said, running for the rear exit.

"I got it!" Velvet said, "The golden book is at Hamunaptra inside the statue of Horus. Take that Bembridge scholars!"

Neptune had reached the front and was mere feet from the car when Ozpin's army began to flood into the street. Thinking fast, Neptune did the only thing he could do; play along.

"Ozpin! Ozpin!" he began chanting monotonously, acting as though he was enslaved as they were. Oddly enough, this worked and the mob went from violent and screaming to their previous brain-dead chanting selves, chanting along with him. They passed him by none the wiser, and once they had done so, he turned and ran to the car.

Jaune's group, along with Ilia and Blake, ran out the back shortly after he managed to get the engine to turn over. Having thought ahead, Mercury ran out the front and caught sight of them. He yelled for his master, who stood in the window his prey had so recently occupied and roared, more to intimidate than out of anger.

"You're gonna get yours, Merc!" Jaune yelled at his old comrade as the car drove off, "You hear me? You're gonna get yours!"

"Oh, like I've never heard that before!" he yelled back.

They sped down the abandoned streets, trying to come with a plan, when suddenly Neptune hits the brakes. The reason why soon became apparent: standing in the headlights and blocking off the street was Ozpin's mindless horde. Seeing no other way, Jaune stepped hard on Neptune's foot, causing him to yell out as he involuntarily slammed on the gas.

"Hang on!" Jaune yelled out as they made contact with the horde, mowing down anyone in their path. Most of the slaves- cuz that's what they were at this point, let's be honest- were sent flying when they collided with the car. Soon though, they began to cling to car, making Jaune, Dove, Ilia and Blake fight them off barehanded. Even Velvet got in on it when she poked a man whose eyeball was swollen from infection, popping the organ and causing the man to cry out in agony, and thus setting Jaune up to toss him off the car.

Dove was surprised when a pair of slaves grabbed him from behind and began to pull. He called to Jaune for help, but was too late. The pair pulled him free of the car and onto the street, but he managed to roll through, dropping his coat and drawing his revolvers. He fired left and right, taking down his assailants with every shot until he finally ran dry. Oddly enough, the horde didn't attack him when he did. They instead simply parted, allowing Ozpin to approach with a rictus smile on his face.

In fear, Dove dropped his weapons. He reached into his coat and pulled out his canopic jar, offering it to Ozpin in the hopes of sparing his life. This turned out to be the incorrect choice as Ozpin did the same to him that he had done to all his compatriots. Mercury stood by, almost unable to watch as Dove Bronzewing was sucked dry and left as little more than beef jerky over a skeleton.

Meanwhile, the car was eventually run off the road and brought to a halt when it ran into a fire hydrant. Water pouring forth, the party of five vacated the wrecked vehicle and ran into the market, the horde hot on their heels. They eventually halted when the group was finally cornered and resumed their chanting. Jaune held a torch before him, trying to keep them at bay while he thought up a plan.

Their chanting eventually receded, and they parted to allow a now whole Ozpin to approach his prey, followed by Mercury.

"It's the creature." Ilia said, hiding her horror well, "And he's fully regenerated."

Ozpin spoke in the ancient tongue, his voice normal now that he was whole once more.

"Come with me, my princess." Mercury translated, "It is time to make you mine forever."

"For all eternity, idiot." Velvet corrected him.

Ozpin spoke again. "Take my hand, and I will spare your friends." Mercury translated.

Jaune scoffed at the words, not buying such obvious bullshit.

"Have you got any bright ideas?" Velvet asked him.

"I'm thinking, I'm thinking." He replied, wringing the handle of his torch nervously.

"Well, you'd better think of something fast, because if he turns me into a mummy, you're the first one I'm coming after." She said with finality before walking to Ozpin's side.

"No." Jaune said, drawing his gun and aiming at Ozpin's head.

"Don't!" Velvet protested. "He still has to take me to Hamunaptra to perform the ritual."

"She is right." Blake said, trying to force his gun arm down. "Live today, fight tomorrow."

Reluctantly, Jaune lowered his gun and glowered at Ozpin.

"I'll be seeing you again." He said, pointing his torch at Ozpin.

Ozpin smiled and began leading Velvet away. Mercury, however, went up to Neptune and began going through his pockets.

"Hey!" Neptune protested "Hands off!"

Mercury stepped back with the key in hand. "Thanks." He said.

"Kill them all!" Ozpin yelled, making Velvet start to fight a losing battle against his grip.

"See ya, pal!" Mercury said, as he scurried after his patron.

As the horde closed in, Jaune looked down and saw a way out, if not an altogether pleasant one; a sewer grate. He tossed the torch aside and removed the cover. He motioned for Neptune and Blake to go in first, promising Neptune that they would be going after Velvet. Ilia, meanwhile, drew a sword and began cutting down the slaves.

"Come on!" Jaune yelled once Blake was in.

"Go!" Ilia insisted before turning back to her bloody work.

With a growl, Jaune jumped in, and mere moments later, Ilia was overwhelmed by the horde. She fought as best she could, but ultimately died screaming.

.....................10 Final......................

The next morning, Jaune, Neptune and Blake drove into a desert airfield, having reclaimed their car a few hours after they lost Velvet. A pair of local boys saluted them as they entered, another local lad raising the barrier for them. Port sat on a hill nearby, drinking tea under an umbrella and listening to Valean jazz.

"Morning, Pete." Jaune said as the trio approached. "Uh, a word, if you don't mind?"

"So what's your little problem got to do with His Majesty's Royal Air Corps?" Port asked, sounding infinitely better than last the group had seen him.

"Not a damn thing." Jaune said bluntly. This caught Port's attention, and he put down his tea.

"Is it dangerous?" he asked, trying to hide his eagerness.

"Well, you probably won't live through it." Jaune said honestly.

"By the Gods, do you think so?"

"Well, everybody else we've bumped into has died, why not you?" Neptune joked. Nobody laughed.

"Well, well, well then." Port stood up, his familiar bravado coming to the fore, "What's the challenge?"

"Rescue the damsel in distress, kill the bad guy, save the world." Jaune said.

Port began to laugh. "Well, then, Peter Port at your service, sir. Ho ho!"

The next thing the trio knew, they were loaded into an old fighter plane and were currently soaring low over the desert. Port was piloting, of course, while Jaune took the gunner position. Jaune looked to his right and whistled.

"Are you alright?" he asked the man strapped there.

"DO I FUCKING LOOK OKAY?!" Neptune yelled back at him.

Taking that as a yes, he turned to the other side and whistled again.

"How ya doing?"

Blake's face said it all, as she was grinning ear-to-ear. She had never even seen a plane before, much less ridden one, her world being a far simpler one, one focused on the old traditions and separated from the technology of the modern world.

Nearby, a sand devil was rampaging across the open desert. Port gained Jaune's attention and pointed at it.

"See that? I've never seen one so big." He yelled to Jaune.

"Never?" Jaune asked back, growing concerned.

"No." Port replied before steering the plane towards Hamunaptra.

Meanwhile, Velvet and Mercury were thrown from the sand devil, landing in a soft dune which broke their falls.

"I need a new job." Mercury said, as Velvet screamed at him to get off her, while crawling away.

The sand devil slowly died down and formed into the black-robed form of Ozpin. He walked down the dune past Velvet and Mercury, who both turned and saw their destination in the distance.

"Oh my Gods." Velvet muttered, seeing the ruins of Hamunaptra. "We're back."

Ozpin looked up and saw the plane circling above. Velvet saw it too, knowing that Jaune had come for her, and while she smiled, Ozpin scowled. Such a nuisance.

He reached out with his powers, and the Earth beneath them began to crack before a wall of sand rose up before them and began to chase the plane.

"Oh my Gods." Jaune said, seeing the wall from his rearward-facing position. "Hey, Pete! Pedal faster!"

Port saw the coming threat in a rearview mirror, and called out for everyone to hold on before putting the plane into a dive. The propeller screamed as they went over a cliff and skimmed over the ground, the wall hot on their heels.

Ozpin's face soon appeared in the wall, smiling victoriously.

In defiance, Jaune began unloading the fixed .30 caliber machine gun into the face, to no avail. Ozpin roared and the sand wall overtook the plane.

"Stop it!" Velvet protested. "You'll kill them!"

"That's the idea." Mercury said as Ozpin focused on the task before him, which required his full concentration.

Inside the storm, Blake and Neptune were screaming their asses off on the wings, Jaune was busy trying not to faint from blood loss from the multiple Gs he was pulling, and Port was laughing madly.

"Here I come, laddies!" he yelled with a maniacal laugh.

Velvet knew she need to break Ozpin's concentration somehow, and despite her reservations on it, did the first thing she could think of: she grabbed Ozpin and drew him into a kiss, turning him bodily away from his task to make sure he couldn't focus.

It had the desired effect, as the sand wall dissipated almost immediately, but the plane was too far gone. It spun out of control, the engine blazing, and crashed behind another dune with a small explosion.

Thankfully for Velvet, who believed her saviors were all dead, the heroic trio managed to survive the impact. Blake managed to stumble to her feet, while awkwardly fell out of his gunner' spot. Neptune, however, was stuck strapped upside down to the wing and was yelling for someone to cut him down. As Jaune did so, Blake walked over to the .30-cal and removed it. She believed it was still operational and knew that they would need all the firepower they could get.

"Peter!" Jaune called out to their pilot. "Hey, Pete!" he knelt beside the pilot and knew almost instantly; he had died on impact. He checked the man's pulse just to be sure, and the lack of it sealed it. Peter Port had gotten his heroic death. He looked to Neptune sadly, and jumped back when the fuselage began to sink into the ground.

"Quick sand!" Neptune yelled, pulling Jaune back.

The trio retreated a few feet and watched the plane sink into the desert, Jaune giving a final salute as the tail fell from sight. He then picked up his gun bag and led the way to Hamunaptra, Blake bringing up the rear with the .30-cal on her shoulder. They had lost a lot of the time they had gained, and they had a job to do.

Inside the ruins, Ozpin led Velvet and Mercury down to the ritual chamber he had used all those centuries ago. Mercury held a gun on her and ordered her to keep moving.

"You know," Velvet said, taking advantage of her quickly dwindling importance to talk back, "Nasty little dickheads like you always get their comeuppance."

Mercury laughed at her for a bit before he noticed how serious her expression was and his smile faltered somewhat. "They do?"

"Oh yeah." She said with a nasty grin. "Always." She walked off, leaving him behind and not a little bit afraid for his own skin.

Blake and Jaune were busy removing rubble from a side passage, while Neptune stood behind them with the torch being entirely not helpful.

"Better get those bigger stones first. And take them from the top, otherwise the whole thing will come down on us. Come on, put your backs into it." Jaune and Blake simultaneously turned and glared at him. "Right, well, you've got the idea, I guess."

He turned and saw some form of sun mural on the wall with scarab jewels on it. Attracted to shiny objects like the child he was, he easily plucked one from the wall.

"Hey, guys, come check this out." He said, as he admired the jewel in his palm. Suddenly, a live scarab broke free from the shell and began burrowing up his arm. He yelled in terror, catching Jaune's attention. He ripped off Neptune's shirt, to show a bulge traveling along his shoulder.

"Whoa!" Jaune yelled, "Hold him." He told Blake, who immediately pinned his arms behind his back while Jaune pulled out a switch blade. Neptune screamed as Jaune semi-carefully dug the scarab out of his shoulder and threw it several feet with a flick of his knife. It landed on its' back and quickly scurried at them, but Jaune calmly drew a revolver and blew it the fuck up.

The gunshot echoed and caught the attention to Ozpin , who was trying to organize the ritual. He quickly tipped a jar of dust into his hand and blew it at a nearby wall, muttering an incantation. Groans could be heard from behind the wall and soon the stone began to crack. Suddenly, the mummified human carvings on said wall tore themselves from the stone and began shambling towards Ozpin.

"Bembridge scholars never wrote about this." Velvet said, amazed and horrified at the same time.

They stopped short of Ozpin and bowed to him. He returned the bow and set them to task.

"Kill them," he said, pointing back the way he had come, "And wake the others."

Jaune led his team deeper into the ruins, shotgun in hand. He dropped into a wide chamber, Blake behind him, and noticed one of the ancient mirrors nearby. The sun was shining directly on it, but it was misaligned. He drew a revolver and shot the rim. It turned a few times before stopping in the proper place, illuminating the room.

It was more vast than they had thought and was filled with gold and jewels. Seems the Hamunaptra myth was proving truer by the minute. Now all they had to worry about was touching the wrong thing and burying themselves alive.

"Can you see..." Neptune said, amazed how the treasure.

"Yeah." Jaune said.

"Can you believe..."

"Yeah."

"Can we just..."

"No."

They heard a strange noise behind them and all three whirled around, guns at the ready. More mummies were pulling themselves out of the ground.

"Who the hell are these guys?" Jaune asked.

"Priests." Blake said, grimly, "Ozpin's priests."

"Alright then." Jaune said before opening fire on the priests, Blake following suit with the .30-cal slung over her shoulders and Neptune firing his own gun. When that ran dry, he grab Jaune's revolvers from their holsters and, ignoring the pain in his shoulder, fired at fast as he could. Soon though, Jaune and Neptune ran dry and the hoard kept coming. Blake still had ammo, but it wasn't enough to hold them back. Jaune grabbed her back and led them away. Mercury ran up as they ran and then noticed the treasure, the little wheels in his head turning in a more selfish direction.

Velvet awoke to find herself chained to a stone slab, canopic jars on her left. She felt a weight on her stomach. She gasped when she saw the rat crawling on her and screamed when she turned to get rid of it and saw a mummified corpse to her right.

Jaune and Blake brought up the rear as the trio ran down a tunnel, firing at the horde chasing them.

"There he is!" Neptune said as he ran out of the tunnel into a new chamber. Inside stood a statue of a seated man with the head of a falcon. "What's up, Horus?"

By the time Jaune and Blake joined him, Blake had run out of ammo. So, Jaune handed her the shotgun and began rummaging through his pockets, pulling out a stick of dynamite. He used Blake's cheek to strike a match and lit the fuse.

"Time to close the door." Jaune said before throwing the dynamite into the doorway. The trio took cover behind the statue and only came out after the sound of shrapnel raining ceased.

A group of priests returned to the ritual chamber and encircled the slab Velvet was laying chained to. They fell to their knees and repeatedly bowed to it. Ozpin walked up with the black book in hand and set it on the podium next to the slab. He looked at the corpse next to Velvet and lovingly caressed its head. He unlocked the book and put the key in his robes. Velvet cried out for help, knowing that the end was close.

As Jaune and Neptune tried to pry open the compartment they had found at the base of the statue, Blake stood of to the side reloading the shotgun. They heard more groans coming from down the hall, indicating that they would soon have company.

"Damn, these guys just don't quit, do they?" Jaune grunted.

Blake cocked the shotgun. "Keep digging." She said, walking to the corridor.

Outside, Mercury had loaded a bag full to bursting with treasure onto the back of a camel he had managed to lure over. It groaned as it felt the full weight of the bag on his back and Mercury panted from the work. He admired a small circular box- a jewelry box of some kind, perhaps- and thought about whether he should go back for more.

Inside, Jaune and Neptune had finally managed to remove the panel and pulled out a wooden box. Hurriedly, the opened it and removed the cloth wrapping to reveal the Book of Light in all its solid gold glory. Meanwhile, Blake unloaded the shotgun down the hallway, cutting down the mummies with every shot until she ran out.

She turned back to the men. "Save the girl. Kill the creature." She said, dropping the shotgun and drawing a sword, before barreling into the hoard, slashing left and right. Neptune grabbed the book while Jaune grabbed his gun bag and drew another stick of dynamite. He lit the fuse and pulled Neptune to an outcrop in the wall. Blake continued to hack away at the horde, yelling at them to get out. Not ones to look a gift horse in the mouth, Neptune dived into the outcrop as Jaune threw the dynamite into another outcrop further down the wall. He dived into cover as the wall exploded, creating a new doorway for them and wiping out a few mummies that had made it past Blake.

"You alright?" Jaune asked. Neptune nodded and Jaune pulled him through the fresh opening.

In the ritual chamber, the mummified priests chanted in the Ancient Tongue as Ozpin read from the black book. Looking up, he and Velvet saw the nearby pool of whatever the fuck it was- it looked like tar- begin to ripple as the same ghost from the beginning rose up from within and flew into Salem's corpse. It shrieked as new life was breathed into it and looked over at Velvet, who screamed her lungs out in terror.

"With your death," Ozpin said, raising a dagger over his head, "Salem shall live. And I, shall be invincible!"

"The Book of Light!" Neptune shouted from atop the staircase, holding the book over his head. "I found it, Velvs, I found it."

Seeing the threat to himself and the potential boon to his plans, Ozpin set down the dagger and made his way confidently to Neptune.

"Shut up and get me off here, Nep!" Velvet said. "No, wait, open the book! It's the only way to kill him. You have to open the book and find the inscription." Unbeknownst to everyone, Jaune carefully removed a sword from the hands of a statue nearby.

"I can't get it open, Velvs! Damn thing must be locked or something." he looked at the cover and saw the familiar lock. "We need the key!"

"It's in his robes!"

Jaune took the distraction to jump off a piece of rubble and start slashing away at the priests, after cutting one of Velvet's chains, of course. Ozpin order them to kill him, but it mattered little. They were priests, not warriors, and Jaune cut them down easily.

Since he had no formal sword training, he resorted to a simple hack n' slash style, combined with his bareknuckle brawling. Seeing that his foes had been dispatched, he decided to grand stand a little.

"Mummies." He joked to Velvet, making ready to cut her other arm free, when he was pulled backwards off his feet.

Landing on his chest, he looked back and saw one of the mummies he had cut in half gripping onto his ankles. He reached for his sword, but another one grabbed him from behind, holding him in place while a third walked over with a large boulder, the plan clear as day: death by crushing.

Jaune struggled against the one wrapped around his neck when he noticed a severed arm crawling towards his sword. Thinking quickly, he waited until the arm grabbed the sword, then he grabbed the arm and used it to slash the legs of the one with the boulder. The results were... predictable.

Elsewhere, Neptune was busy trying to translate what he could from the cover of the golden book.

"Here's something. Rashim- rashimulu- Rashimulu kashka!" he said happily. His smile instantly flipped when he heard chanting coming from a hallway. From the hallway came a squad of ten more mummies, all clearly warriors based on the arms and armor they wore. Neptune facepalmed while Ozpin smiled at his luck.

"Oh yeah," June chuckled, "This just keeps getting better and better." He backed away with his sword at the ready, keeping Velvet behind him.

"Do something, Nep." Velvet said.

"Me?"

"You can command them."

"I call bullshit."

"Finish the inscription on the cover, idiot. Then you can control them!"

The warriors advanced slowly, weapons ready and shields raised. The mummified Salem appeared behind Velvet and growled as best she could before slashing at her with the dagger. She missed as Velvet managed to jump out of the way. Ozpin took advantage and ordered the warriors to kill Jaune. A trio of the warriors jumped over the pool and stood before Jaune. He yelled at them in defiance until he ran out of breath. The warriors roared back, their mouths stretching unnaturally large.

"Uh-uh." Jaune said before disengaging. He wasn't running or retreating. No, that would be a coward's move. He was simply disengaging to find a better place to fight, preferably on the other side of the room. The warriors followed him without missing a beat.

Meanwhile, Velvet remained in the room, running from the shrieking form of Salem, and doing a fair job of it.

"Hurry up, Neptune!" she yelled out desperately.

Jaune ran for a rope tied to a wall, grabbed hold of it and cut it. It pulled him up and dropped a weighted cage on one of the skeleton warriors, crushing it.

Seeing he had escaped, he ran down another hallway. A roar was heard from within, and shortly thereafter, Jaune ran back out, followed by another trio of warriors.

He ran down the staircase, unaware that the warriors by-passed the stairs by crawling on the walls. When he reached the bottom, he turned and sighed in relief at the lack of enemies behind him, only to turn back around and see five of them in front of him. With a yelp he brought his sword up, parried a few blows and cut the head off one of the warriors.

Somewhere in the ritual chamber, Neptune had almost finished his translation. But...

"I can't figure out this last symbol!" he yelled to Velvet.

"What does it look like?" Velvet yelled back, before rounding a corner into the grip of Salem. The corpse grabbed her by the throat and held the dagger high, but Velvet held her wrist to keep it at bay.

Jaune was holding his own against the skeletons. He had taken position on a platform in another pool that was just big enough that he only had to deal with a single opponent at a time. A new foe had landed before him, drawing his attention away from the foe who had worked his way behind him. He managed to bring his current foe to his knees and raised his sword to deliver the final blow. As he did, he stabbed the opponent behind him in the head and slashed down into his primary foe. Seeing the extra weight on his sword, he looked back and saw the decapitated corpse waving it's arms around. He kicked his first foe into the water, turned and cut the second one in half.

"It's a bird. A stork!" Neptune said.

Jaune was knocked on his ass by a powerful blow. He grabbed a torch and set his opponent on fire.

Velvet struggled to get the word out as Salem continued strangling her and she kept the mummy's arm in place. "A- Ahmenophus!" she choked out.

"Ah, ah, hutashim ahmenophus!" Neptune yelled out as the remaining skeleton warriors made the final strike all together. They stopped just short, most of the weapons poking Jaune in the face. For some reason they stepped back and stood at the ready.

"Destroy him!" Ozpin ordered. The skeletons refused to move. "Destroy him! I command you to destroy him!"

Neptune saw Salem slashing at Velvet's midsection and thought up the first command he could think in the Old Tongue. "Fakushka Salem!" ("Kill Salem". More or less.)

"Salem!" Ozpin turned to Neptune, "Give me that book." He growled as Neptune dropped the book and slid it away from himself with his foot. But he was too late. The warriors raised their weapons and marched over to Salem, laying into her without pause nor mercy. Ozpin's face contorted in anger and he grabbed Neptune by the throat. "Now you die."

Jaune took the chance to come at Ozpin with a sword and cut his arm off just above the elbow. Neptune hit the floor with the arm still gripping his neck. Ozpin looked down at his stump, then back at Jaune. He grabbed him and threw him ten feet across the room with inhuman strength. His simply reattached his arm as he walked over to Jaune and did it again.

Neptune returned to his feet. "Velvs, I got it!" he said, holding up the key.

"Keep him busy!" Velvet said as she ran up to her brother, who held up the book as she unlocked it and began to leaf through the golden plates.

Jaune screamed as he flew across the room again and impacted on a wall before hitting the floor.

"No problem." He groaned before Ozpin picked him up and threw him again.

"Hurry Velvet, hurry!" Neptune said.

"You're not helping." She replied in a nervous sing-song voice.

Ozpin lifted Jaune up by the neck. "Now it's your turn." He whispered before he began to open his mouth to suck Jaune dry.

"I've got it!" Velvet said, reading from the book, "Kadishmal, kadishman, paraduce, paraduce."

A whip cracked and a spectral chariot was seen racing down the stairs toward Ozpin. He threw Jaune aside and cried out as the chariot made contact with him. A spectral version of Ozpin could be seen in the back of the chariot trying to escape as it raced off back up the stairs. Ozpin chased after it, shouting in the Old Tongue.

"I thought you said it was gonna kill him." Jaune said, rubbing his throat as he scooped up a sword.

Ozpin came at them, but was stopped when he heard the sound of metal piercing flesh. He looked down and knew something was wrong.

"He's mortal." Velvet said.

Jaune pulled the sword from Ozpin's stomach. With a gasp at the pain he now felt, he clutched the wound, trying to stem the bleeding and stumbled back into the pool. As he sunk into the goop, his skin began to decay. Jaune, Velvet and Neptune watched from the edge as he said once last phrase in the Ancient Tongue before he was consumed by what I presume to be the souls of the underworld.

"Death is only the beginning." Velvet said somberly.

Mercury was walking down a corridor with another load of treasure slung over his shoulder, struggling with this much larger haul. Needing a break, he set the load on a stone carving jutting out from the wall. As he caught his breath, the carving began to droop with a creaking of stone and the entire corridor began to shake. Looking up at the sand falling from the ceiling, he saw that the ceiling was coming down on him.

"Time to go." Jaune said, his group seeing this all happening as well, but not knowing why. He grabbed Velvet's hand and led them out as best he could figure. Neptune carried the book, but it threw him off balance as he ran and he tripped up a small staircase, loosing his grip. The book hit the floor and slid into another pool, but he didn't care and picked himself back up to run.

Velvet ran back to the pool with a horrified look on her face. "You lost the book!" she yelled and was about to launch into a genuinely furious tirade but for Jaune and Neptune pulling her away.

Mercury tried to carry his bag of treasure down the corridor, torch leading him and the ceiling still coming down on him. Seeing his exit about to be cut off, he dropped the bag and crawled, just able to exit the corridor before it was sealed on top of him.

The Trio's way out led them through the treasure room, where Neptune skidded to a stop and looked around at all the soon-to-be-lost treasure just lying there, practically asking to be... rescued.

"Come on, guys, can't we just- "

"No!" Velvet said as she and Jaune ran back to him and pulled him back in line.

Mercury was close behind them, his path leading back into the treasure room as well. He yelled for Jaune to wait for him, to help him, and Jaune tried, he really did. He even stood in the doorway of the exit with his arms out until the absolute last moment and the door slammed shut.

"Good bye, Mercury." He said to himself on the other side of the door.

On Mercury's side, the door was closed, but he had just enough time to make it back into the treasure room and avoid being compacted. He looked for another exit, but was only able to watch as they were sealed one after the other. The collapsing ceiling even crushing the mirror, cutting him off from sunlight- and potentially oxygen- leaving him with only his torch as a source of illumination.

He turned as a scarab beetle crawled up on top of a statue and chittered at him. He frustratedly tried to shoo it away with his torch but it squealed in protest. Suddenly, the chittering became louder and louder as thousands of scarabs surrounded him. They slowly closed in on him as his torch began to go out, and the last the audience heard of Mercury Black were his screams as the scarabs tore into his flesh.

The trio ran through the crumbling ruins of Hamunaptra, barely managing to make it to safety before the whole place was consumed by the desert in a cloud of dust and sand. They stood among a group of camels, watching it all unfold when a hand grabbed Neptune's shoulder. He yelled and the trio turned to see Blake sitting on the back of a camel, with a small smile on her face.

"Oh, thanks for that. Thank you very much." Neptune said as he clutched his heart, which was going at a couple thousand beats per minute.

"You have earned the respect and gratitude of me and my people. He said, her smile widened at Neptune's expense.

"Yeah, well, it was nothing, really."

"May the Gods smile upon you always." She said in farewell before leading her camel away.

"And she's leaving us. Fantastic." Neptune grumbled. "Well, I guess we go home empty-handed. Again."

"I wouldn't say that." Jaune said, looking down at Velvet. She looked back up at him and pulled him into a kiss.

"Oh, please." Neptune whined, averting his eyes from the touching scene and saddling up a camel for himself.

After their little moment, Jaune and Velvet mounted a camel together and rode off into the sunset with Neptune, not knowing that their camel was the very one Mercury had laden down with treasure. They were officially set for life.


End file.
